Edu-leaders

There was a time when Bengaluru-based RV College of Engineering (RVCE), with 4,500 students, waded through a voluminous sea of data related to admission, attendance, academic schedule, etc., making extraction of information a nightmare. Departments had no standardised method to generate reports—some did it manually, others on Excel. When enough was enough, the college decided to implement an Education Resource Planning (ERP) solution to help automate its sea of data. The application was deployed on the college’s central server, capturing information. Today, students, teachers and administrators can access the centralised database through the intranet.
For Oxford Educational Institutions of Bengaluru, the need for ERP was driven by their inability to consolidate data and submit compliance reports on time to AICTE and DTE. ERP solutions helped them smoothen information flow across departments and fine-tune report mechanism. It made staff administration more effective. The scalable platform allowed room for handling processes. “Our ERP solution, SmartCampus, takes care of all stages—pre-admission to placement. It can be best utilised when institutions customise it,” says Girish Baliga, founder CEO, IDenizen Smartware Pvt Ltd, which has provided technology solutions to around 80 higher education
institutions (HEIs).

Smart Campuses
Issuing smart cards, integrated with the ERP system, to students, faculty and staff have become common. These act as identity cards containing name, address, phone number, etc. They are used to control access to premises, facilities and networks, and monitor attendance. Faridabad-based Lingaya University adopted SMS into its ERP application enabling the administration to send SMS alerts to parents after report cards have been issued, or payment has been made using the smart card. At Manipal
University, the chip-based card doubles up as an ATM-cum-debit and medical card. “These coupled with closed-circuit televisions reduce the need for continuous entry management,” says Dr Gopalakrishna Prabhu, registrar, Manipal. “HEIs are looking at networking solutions that offer secure, cost-efficient and real-time connectivity,” says Rajesh Shetty, vice president, Cisco India and SAARC. Assam University recently deployed LAN with fibre and copper wiring for uninterrupted, campus-wide connectivity to the internet and internet–based resources. It helps data transfer among 29 departments on its 600-acre campus. Next phase: connecting 51 colleges under the university umbrella to enable eGovernance. Multi-site deployment is another key challenge, as HEIs expand across locations. Manipal has established a virtual
private network connecting HEIs in India and abroad with a multi-protocol label switching backbone. “We can add new locations and services such as video conferencing and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP),” says Dr Prabhu. For seamless internet connectivity, Manipal got a 100-MB bandwidth and Wi Fi mesh network, supporting multimedia services such as IPTV and VoIP. “HEIs have high-speed and high-traffic data networks that require ultra-speed security. We have institutes coming to us in need of 10GBPS,” says Vishak Raman, regional director, SAARC and Saudi Arabia Fortinet. Network security solutions company has been providing Amity and National Institute of Technology, Calicut, a unified threat management platform including firewalling, antivirus protection and web content filtering.

Going Online
Amity offers online counselling to students and parents. HEIs are increasingly helping parents track student records such as attendance, exam dates, marksheets and fee, either online or over mobile phones. IIM Bangalore is implementing an ERP system to bring together islands of IT systems developed by each of its six programmes to create a common platform.
“Technology brings in efficiency and transparency, reducing cost, effort and time. It helps management to monitor, control and deploy resources efficiently,” says George Paul, executive vice president, HCL Infosystems. “The key is to create a digital environment where pieces of automation can interact seamlessly,” says Praful Pillay, senior vice president, SunGard Higher Education. Around 80,000 students have sat for the online admission tests for Manipal University for the past five years. While 40,000 students took Narsee Monjee Management Aptitude Test conducted in a computer-based format across 51 centres in India and 11 countries abroad in 2010—for the first time. A few HEIs are also showing interest in automating core exam processes such as setting question papers and assessing answer sheets. “We have developed a system based on client-server technology for online assessment of exams,” says K.N. Subramanya, director (administration) RVCE.
A majority of India’s HEIs are, however, being left out of the technology race because of poor computer and internet penetration. Only 22 percent of government HEIs have ERP systems. An average Indian college has 229 students per computer, notes a 2009 Ernst&Young Survey (Making Indian Higher Education System Future Ready). According to the survey, only one percent in rural areas (where 72 per cent Indians live) use the internet.

Next Big Thing
“Software as a service (SaaS) or cloud computing is going to be the next big thing in HEI administration,” says Swapnil Dharmadhikari, founder-director, Splashgain  Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd. He should know, considering that in the past four months after its launch, 10 HEIs have subscribed to his company’s SaaS-based admission platform— ePravesh. End-to-end service enables HEIs manage pre-admission and admission processes online. In this model, institutes do not need to invest in software
licences or hardware, as administration tools are made available through internet. They need to pay per usage and login to the service from anywhere to manage  administration in a cost-effective manner. “Smaller HEIs, which have no budgets for in-house data centres, are finding it more attractive,” he says. Another emerging trend is biometric systems. Manipal uses it to avoid impersonation during examinations, while Amity is introducing it in hostels to stop the entry of unauthorised persons.