Stockport Council - Case Study
Stockport Council’s switch to Synergy education management solution has improved the visibility of each child’s school attendance and has simplified interactions with parents and schools.
By improving digital processes, Synergy has reduced the administrative burden on staff, giving Stockport Council more time to focus on improving outcomes, as well as helping to make financial savings.
Information sharing made simple
The Council required a system that would automatically import daily demographic and sessional attendance data from schools, as well as maintain a single view of the child across multiple teams and services.
It also needed a system that would interact digitally with a variety of stakeholders and meet the functional and statutory needs of the service, enabling it to monitor, safeguard and improve outcomes for children.
Introduction
Synergy makes information sharing simple across systems, providers, departments and even other authorities. Its import tool allows attendance data to be imported from potentially any source, not just maintained schools and to record and manage all aspects of children’s services in a single education management system.
The Children and Family teams now have full visibility of each child and the insight to make better decisions. A range of case management tools enables them to more effectively monitor and track pupils.
There is also a document management system, which allows letters to be designed in Microsoft Word and mail merged, as well as embedded in emails, reducing costs for printing and postage.
In addition, Stockport schools have the Synergy School Access Module (SAM) portal for checking free school meals entitlement and admissions allocations. Previously, teams had to send the free meals data as a spreadsheet to schools each month. This has led to savings in time and resources and gives schools more accurate and timely information about the pupils in their care.
The Admissions, Early Years and Free School Meals modules proved to be far better designed than our previous system, and the functionality was much more sophisticated. The consultants who steered us through the various module implementations and data migration were excellent.
With Synergy, we can better manage our online attendance services and assist customers with any issues. Synergy’s flexibility means we spend far less time on admin. As well as having better functionality it was the most cost-effective in comparison to other suppliers, allowing us to re-direct funds back into continuous improvement of the service we provide.
The result
- Real-time visibility enables efficient resource planning
- A more flexible system means the Council can better manage its admissions services and assist with customer queries
- Better document management reduces admin, time and costs, including postage
- A single view of the child across multiple services improves accuracy, reduces risk and improves overall safeguarding
Customer experience
Stockport Council has a nationally recognised digital transformation programme focused on improving customer experience. They are redesigning the way they deliver services, based on the needs of the people using them and embracing all the opportunities digital solutions bring to increase end-to-end service effectiveness and efficiency.
Synergy, our leading education management system, has helped Stockport Council to improve outcomes by creating a closer interaction between families, schools and other providers in Stockport and has assisted the Council in working more efficiently to improve outcomes.
