Operating a learning center with many types of courses – with variations of duration, schedules, class capacities, teacher allocation, and age ranges – poses a lot of administrative challenges. It is a time-consuming and admin-heavy task in the best of times. When we’re required to schedule make-up or catch-up lessons, whether due to sickness or other circumstances, a disproportionate amount of work is required, both from the administrators and the parents.
From an administrator’s standpoint, arranging a make-up session requires several steps to ensure that billing is not doubled up, that classes are not inadvertently overbooked, and that the attendance record is accurate for that student both for the class that they’ve missed and the new one. This is important not only for the school’s financial records, but also, in many cases, for regulatory and safeguarding purposes as well. All of this has to be done while ensuring that the customer gets a make-up class that suits them without feeling the significant administrative burden. From a parent’s perspective, a make-up class represents their time and hard-earned money, meaning that they will only be happy if the make-up session works for them. When a parent has to book a make-up session, they have to take their time to communicate their availability with the administrator in a way that is clear and often unpredictable, especially with a class that falls outside of their routine. As such, it may be unavoidable that the parent engages on several occasions with the administrator in order to coordinate this. Make-up sessions don’t have to be this difficult, and they aren’t with EngagePlus. With a centralized and well-managed database, the arrangement of a make-up session is streamlined and safe from human error. The mechanics of arranging a make-up session may appear simple from a technological standpoint, but when the session is actually being re-arranged, it has to happen swiftly and accurately. This is, historically, a process that has been sub-optimal. The speed of the operation means that any difficulty that is introduced, whether from the UI, server lag, human error, or other, causes problems for the school’s reputation, labor costs, finances, internal communications, and operational scalability. EngagePlus not only solves all of these makeup issues – which have been greatly compounded by the outbreak of Covid-19 in Hong Kong – but also allows parents to re-schedule themselves easily and at any time through a proprietary app. No more back-and-forths with admin, no more waiting for next-day confirmation, no more mistakes.