SIMS

Overall Opinion: For over 30 years, DigitalEDU has been providing quality software platforms to help public and private schools in India more effectively manage their students and staff, and they've remained diligent about keeping up with the demands of their clients and staying relevant to the changing conditions of technology and curriculum. SIMS serves as their flagship of their software catalog and contains all the tools that administrators need to keep their institutions relevant in a rapidly shifting world. SIMS stands for School Information Management, and if that designation seems exceedingly broad, that's because it is. The platform consists of a number of different components that can be mixed or matched to accommodate the specific needs of administrators and educators. DigitalEDU knows that there's no size fits all solution in the classroom or the office, and that's why they've aimed for a wholly modular approach to management. SIMS subscriptions are split up into a number of packages which bundle together modules and offer specialized selections tailored to the specific needs of different breeds of educator. These are split up into categories like Admissions, Transportation, Health Care, and Food Service. The core interface comes embedded with hooks you can use to easily integrate the SIMS system with existing management and oversight software. For educators looking to more effectively keep track of individual students, classrooms, and overall educational process, SIMS has a range of effective solutions. Their parent/school communications system allows you to compartmentalize email, SMS, and portal communications all through one central hub and communicate with both individuals and groups. One on one communications are compartmentalized into their own strands, while sending out mass alerts and notifications to everyone in a directory is a simple affair. Their SMS server runs 24/7, so teachers can reach parents and vice versa regardless of the time of day. If parents request information about their children, all the information is right there at the press of a button. Attendance management and progress report management are integrated into the same space, and information is automatically integrated into the right forms as soon as the teacher enters them. That eliminates the need to manually tabulate grades or create reports by hand. Tools are also available to oversee things from a more top down administrative level. The library management software serves as an interactive catalog, tracking all of your books as well as where they're allocated at any given time, while their food management component lets you create and track menus, compare them to inventory, and share them with students and parents directly through the interrelated messaging systems. Healthcare management is similarly robust with its complicated accounting for student needs like allergies, medications, and blood types. SIMS even includes a robust finance management component that allows you to track spending and outstanding fees and alert individuals about what they owe.

Pros: Modular design makes it easy to customize an app suited to your school Easy to learn, with a single interface across all modules

Cons: Archaic interface is somewhat burdensome Little distribution outside of the Indian educational market