Syntra Central Flanders With more than 100 full-time employees and more than 900 instructors, it is a leading educational organization in the East Flanders and Flemish Brabant region. Spread across five campuses, the organization offers a wide range of long-term courses, both in the evenings and during the day. In addition, there are training programs for individuals with an apprenticeship contract and short-term training courses for self-employed individuals.
Danny Verbeyst, Director of Operations at Syntra: “All in all, Syntra Vlaanderen offers more than 100,000 course hours across more than 500 different training programs. Because each program consists of different modules, we have a total of no fewer than 9,600 different course modules. ”To keep all of that running smoothly, you have to be exceptionally well-organized administratively."
From Custom Development to Microsoft Dynamics CRM
In the past, Syntra Midden-Vlaanderen used a custom-built application to handle all administrative follow-up tasks. Over the years, new features were continually added to meet users’ additional needs. “Maintaining that custom application proved unsustainable in the long run. We therefore decided to look for a single, integrated standard application that could offer a whole range of features ‘out of the box,’”, Danny Verbeyst explains.
That this solution is based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM A demo quickly revealed what it would be based on: “Microsoft Dynamics CRM turned out to be exactly what we needed: a standard application with rich functionality that our own users can customize to their specific needs without any programming knowledge.”
Alistar, based in De Pinte, was selected as the IT partner for the implementation of the new application and the necessary customization. Danny Verbeyst: “The analysis document, which initially consisted of 350 pages, grew to more than 1,000 pages as the project progressed. We’ve certainly come a long way with Alistar!”
The ambition of Syntra Central Flanders It was clear from the very beginning: Microsoft Dynamics CRM was to evolve, in several phases, into a comprehensive A platform for managing class schedules, instructors, grade recording, enrollment, billing, and more—with the icing on the cake being an intensive exchange of data with the government and Syntra Vlaanderen.
Management of class schedules, instructors, and students
At Syntra Central Flanders Managing complex class schedules with hundreds of class sessions per year is quite a challenge: complex factors such as campus hours, classroom and instructor availability, and labor laws must all be taken into account… Alistar provided these functionalities in an add-on module for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Managing faculty members is also a particularly delicate task, subject to a strict legal framework. Almost every teacher is a freelancer who is required to work under contract. For each lesson assignment, you must a DIMONA filing must be submitted, and the attendance and absences of teachers must be reported in detail to Syntra Flanders.
Alistar built in Microsoft Dynamics CRM a comprehensive system that always provides an accurate overview of the schedule and attendance. As an added feature, Alistar also provided Microsoft SharePoint to link documents directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to contacts, files, attendance lists, etc.
Danny Verbeyst: “As a nonprofit with limited resources, you have to constantly innovate to make your processes even more efficient.”. ”For example, in the future, we plan to implement an SMS application that—based on the database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM—automatically sends a text message to course participants when a course needs to be canceled."
Communication with the government is crucial for funding
What courses are offered? Which instructors are hired? Who are the students? How many credits did they earn? Exchanging information with Syntra Flanders, is an important project for Syntra Midden-Vlaanderen.
“It may seem surprising, but at Syntra Central Flanders We have to make a great deal of effort with the government to earn our funding. ”To be eligible for funding, students must, for example, have attended an average of two-thirds of the classes and must also have taken the exam," says Danny Verbeyst.
Alistar handled the integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM using the Syntra Vlaanderen system. Danny Verbeyst: “No fewer than 24 exchange processes were defined in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system, which has freed us from a great deal of manual work.”
Syntra Vlaanderen also serves as the central agency responsible for Paying salaries and travel allowances to teachers and validating diplomas and certificates. Wizards and workflows for tracking registrations and payments. Students can register online using a wizard. They can choose to either pay directly online or later, after receiving a payment request.
“Every year, it sends out Syntra Central Flanders more than 20,000 payment requests or invoices. ”In the past, the entire process of registrations, payment requests, reminders, and billing was handled in part through a custom-built application," said Danny Verbeyst.
Today, the entire payment tracking and invoicing process is managed from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Alistar used the application’s standard workflow functionality for this; according to Danny Verbeyst, a major improvement is that, unlike our previous application, the same workflow serves as the basis for tracking both manual and online registrations. With this in mind, Alistar also provided An integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the Exact Globe accounting system: this allows payment information to be exchanged automatically between the two software systems.
