Bespoke Course Management Software
We were asked to look at a course management system for Enterprise Made Simple (EMS), a major business training company based on Teesside. They run multiple courses funded/part-funded by a variety of bodies and had been utilising multiple (over 100) spreadsheets to manage the courses.
Different funding bodies required different information about the course attendees, so there was no standard data model for a customer, a course or a funding body.
So our first task was to create a standard data model that met the needs of all funders as well as EMS internally. We also had to bear in mind that there may be changes and additional information required over time, so we needed a properly normalised data model to enable growth and edits.
The outcome was a simple-to-use course managment system that allows EMS staff to add contacts and courses with all the necessary detail included for each learner that meets the requirements of the funders, plus extras such as dietary requirements for face-to-face courses. The status of each learner on each course is easily updated including right up to completed and certified.
Updating & Automating
Over time EMS have been successful in winning contracts in different geographical areas so the system had to enable in-house addition of extra local authorities along with ethnicity data, gender data, etc to meet funder requirements. So the system has a simple admin panel to allow for the editing, addition and deletion of this information.
We were requested, some time after launch, to include automated integration with Mailchimp to ensure that learners signing up for a course or making a general enquiry were added to the relevant Mailchimp list (with learner permission, of course). This has greatly reduced staff time for manually doing this and ensured that clients get automated emails that are relevant to them.
Later, we were asked to add a simple room booking system too.
We continue to work with EMS, building long-term relationships with our clients is important to us.