Agape International Missions (AIM) has fought sex trafficking and been transforming communities in Cambodia since 2005. Their programs for prevention, rescue, victim restoration and reintegration impact over 10,000 people every year.
A cornerstone of AIM's prevention strategy is education, through affordable schooling for low-income families. With the amount of students doubling, and a new 1200-capacity school under construction, paper-based processes were placing a huge burden on the admissions team. We built a school attendance system to digitize the monitoring and invoicing process of the nominal fees that enable the school to continue its work.
| Client | Agape International Missions | |||
| Service | ||||
| Team | Product Owner, Technical Lead, 2 Developers, DevOps team | |||
| Timeframe | 1 sprint | |||
| Technology |
| |||
| User | 6 admin staff monitoring up to 1200 students |
Business Benefits
Digital Attendance Tracking
Student attendance is now tracked via an IoT device worn by each student, giving the administration a real-time view of which students are on site
Fast Access to Information
Thanks to the online intranet-based school system, cross-checking student, parent, teacher and fee information is instant and can be done from anywhere in the school
Automation Increases Efficiency
The overdue fee monitoring is now automated, with the goal of saving admissions team hours on manual invoicing processes each week
The Challenge
- Reduce time spent on laborious paper processes
- Identify students with outstanding fee payments as soon as they arrive at school
- Replace current manual overdue fee monitoring process with a digital system
- Automate the printing of notification letters, invoices and billing receipts for overdue fees
Highlights
A Break from Traditional Web Development
- We put our engineering hats on for this project, setting up prototype hardware to test scanning devices - our team had a lot of fun testing NFC cards as well as the usual code
- We created a Python application to transfer information between the physical device and system
Controlled Budget using Components
- By adapting an existing school management system from ERP powerhouse Odoo, we were able to use development resources wisely
- We helped AIM to find generic NFC scanners and tags that would provide a cost-effective solution and consulted them on the best server for their needs
Onsite Collaboration with End Users
- During our onsite kick off, sprint reviews and product demos we were happy to see the excited reactions from the admin staff, and see how the system was going to make their daily work so much easier
- As the kids went in and out of school it was inspiring to envisage the positive impact the new technology will have on them, through the successful delivery of the education programs to brighten their future
The New Improved Process
The main development challenge for this school system was the integration of an IoT-device into Odoo. We managed to enable the NFC-scanner to communicate with Odoo, display information about outstanding fees, and enter attendance-data into the live system - all of that with a scanning time of a couple of seconds, so that the future 1000+ students can enter the school without queuing.
Leo Follner
Web Developer at Web Essentials
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