Why it’s Worth Making the Switch to a SaaS Solution from an in-House Data Solution for School Districts
As those who work with a school district may know, one of the most defining types of work done is data collection and organization. For those on the outside looking in, data collection may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a school district, however, but this is very much so the case.
School districts are constantly faced with the challenge of finding effective and efficient ways to collect relevant data regarding students within their district, student families, overall academic performance, and a multitude of other areas. While simply acquiring said data may not be too difficult, the real work begins when it comes to organizing this data and using it to provide actionable information regarding real events within the school district.
It’s heard that SaaS solutions and/or what’s known as education data warehouses begin to prove why they’re staples in any successful school district administration’s toolkit. Collecting and organizing data in a manner that software solutions such as the ones mentioned before do manually is next to impossible due to the sheer amount of raw data that comes with the management of a whole school district, which is exactly what makes software solutions that can remedy this so popular in this regard.
What Is the Difference Between an in-House Solution and a SaaS Solution for School Districts, and What Exactly Do These Services Do?
Reliable in-house software solutions can prove to be a great help for school districts across the board, however, the point to be made here is that while in-house software solutions can serve as a boon to a school district’s data organization woes, they may not always be the best solution available.
While the role that software like this plays is crucial to moving a school district in a positive direction, in-house software solutions aren’t the only way to work around the many daunting tasks that school districts face daily.
What solutions like SaaS as well as in-house software solutions allow school districts to do with the warehouse of student and education data that they’ve collected ranges from identifying students who consistently over or underperform academically, to being able to recognize pattern absences or other behavioral abnormalities, then report this and allow staff to take action based on this data.
It seems inarguable that having software like this is a great thing for a school district, but the important thing to mention is that oftentimes, many in-house software solutions can’t accomplish the aforementioned functions, along with many other feats for a variety of reasons. This is where the discrepancy between an in-house solution and a SaaS solution begins to be made more apparent.
An in-house software solution for a school district is exactly that, a software solution developed internally for the school district looking to benefit from it. And while there may be some initial perceived benefits to using a custom system, the reality of the matter is that most school districts aren’t very well equipped to build an accurate and reliable software solution, not to mention maintain said solution without investing too many funds into a software development and maintenance team; especially when such funds could be put to better use within the schools.
Why Is a SaaS Solution the Better Choice for a School District’s Data Management?
An education SaaS solution offers much more freedom and reliability to a school district. To begin, a SaaS solution is technically consumer service products and because of this do not need to be run or constructed in-house, do not require a dedicated software team or individual to ensure they’re kept up and running, and can more often than not do much more than an in-house solution could offer due to the fact that they are developed and maintained by not only education but also administration and software professionals. This, along with the fact that SaaS solutions tend to be much cheaper than designing an in-house solution from scratch shows education SaaS solutions as the evident winner in almost every scenario when it comes to choosing a data solution for your school district.
