South West Gauteng College selects business management systems from Adapt IT

In order to more effectively support its employees and the students attending its various campuses, not to mention its large distance learning programmes, the South West Gauteng College (SWGC) has turned to Adapt IT for assistance. The college has chosen to implement a range of modules from the company's ITS Integrator enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

With a head office located at Molapo in Soweto and additional campuses spread throughout Soweto, Roodepoort and Randburg, SWGC is viewed as a genuine citadel of education and training for a host of communities across this wide catchment area. Furthermore, the college is accredited by Umalusi and several Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) to offer a range of education and training courses.

Since the college is the only institute of its kind to offer distance education programmes on a large scale, the effective management of such programmes can be difficult. According to Frans van den Berg, Manager for Business Development (Education) at Adapt IT, the ITS Integrator system is ideally suited to support this programme delivery mode.

"SWGC has, in fact, selected a wide range of system modules from the ITS Integrator ERP solution, in order to support the business processes of the college. Among the systems selected include Student Management and Financial Management, as well as Human Resources and Payroll Management," he says.

In addition, adds Van den Berg, the college has contracted Adapt IT to implement the CELCAT Timetabler system to solve class timetabling challenges. This is a system used in more than 30 countries worldwide.

"Our ITS Integrator product suite has been carefully designed to suit small, medium-sized and large institutions. It provides a rich set of functionality to enable back-office operations, as well as self-service functions for students and staff alike. It has been developed specifically to meet the highly dynamic and frequently changing needs of the educational landscape."

Andre Schlemmer, Deputy Principal: Corporate Affairs and Planning at SWGC, adds that the college is adopting a phased implementation approach, with the first module - that of Student Registration - due to go live in January 2014.

"After this, Adapt IT will ensure a progressive rollout of the additional functionality, encompassing finance, HR and payroll, with the overall goal of completing the project by the end of the first quarter of 2014," he says.

"SWGC supports the Further Education and Training Business Management System (FET BMS) initiative of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), and is thus proud to be associated with Adapt IT and its ITS Integrator system.

"We are of the opinion that both our data integrity and the reporting provided to our various stakeholders will be greatly enhanced by our migration to Adapt IT's ITS Integrator ERP system."

Van den Berg claims that the benefits offered to SWGC by the new system are many and varied.

"It will not only streamline their business processes and drive greater efficiencies within the institute, but will also provide stakeholders with a far more detailed level of management information. Additionally, it is expected to make the student registration process function much more smoothly. And, of course, should they wish to add to the system in future, there are a number of additional system modules that can be implemented to augment the solution even further," he concludes.