Contact Us
Client
Brisbane Grammar School
Scope of work
Cloud Services
Industry
Education
Location
Brisbane, Queensland
Download PDF

Overview

Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) was founded in 1868, making it one of the oldest schools in the nation. In line with its rich history, the school educates 1,900 students from Years 5 to 12, with 100 of these students calling the school their home through the on-site boarding facilities. It is renowned for its commitment to academic excellence and holistic development.

BGS recently launched a digital strategy to enhance its educational services and adapt to the rapidly changing world. Through a strong digital transformation agenda, BGS aims to be the leading school for boys in Australia.

Brisbane Grammar School sign with purple flowers in front

Fast Facts

  • Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications.
  • Has out-of-the-box functionality and contains 12 modules in total.
  • Manages people, well-being, attendance, enrolment, staffing, relationships, registrations, legal arrangements, medical needs, health records, and counselling.
  • Strengthens ties with stakeholders and enhances the educational experience for students and staff, using a single core platform.

“The new SIS is the ultimate digital assistant for our school. It is a platform that organises and manages all the important information about our students, teachers, and school activities in one easy-to-use system. It will be a game changer for the education sector and all schools.

Atturra is a valuable partner, and it’s great to see them meeting our set delivery timeframes for services and solutions that will underpin the SIS and digital ways of working for many years to come.”

Alexis Hill,
Chief Information Officer, Brisbane Grammar School

Business Opportunity

Following an extensive review of its technology systems, BGS discovered it had accumulated 42 bespoke applications for managing its day-to-day administration services for students, teachers and parents. The time taken to keep all the apps up to date and connected was proving frustrating, while the overall user experience tended to be disjointed and slow.

BGS sought a solution that would address these issues while also being capable of handling its evolving needs into the future. Importantly, the system needed to be intuitive and easy to use (as a developer, administrator or user) with minimal coding or ongoing development work.

The team also envisioned developing a software solution that could serve other schools facing similar challenges.

Solution

Atturra’s certified Microsoft experts worked with BGS to assess its legacy systems and requirements for a new student information system (SIS). The SIS would replace numerous existing disconnected systems and processes, while supporting decision-making for the school to drive core school activities. The expectation was that the core system would support the addition of new modules to focus on specific needs, such as people and profiles and location and activities.

To meet the school’s needs, Atturra worked in sprints to present new elements of functionality to the school’s administrators as they were configured. This Agile approach fostered a truly collaborative style to the build, resulting in helpful and regular feedback, and a constructive team environment.

The SIS was built using the smarts of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications, which provide robust out-of-the-box capabilities, strong integration capabilities via APIs and message queues, and native integration with low and no-code platforms.

The new solution created by Atturra supports an array of workflow processes and approvals, including personalised learning, school reports, excursions, communications, resource and incident management, and financial billing and reporting.

Outcomes achieved

By July 2024, Atturra had delivered the first two of the 12 SIS modules within three months of signing the contract with BGS. These modules, People and Profile and Location and Activities Tracking, streamline administrative processes and enhance the school’s operational efficiency.

The SIS now allows core activities and processes that previously required users to move across multiple screens to occur in the same spot. It is also ready for many more capabilities to be added over time. As extra modules are added, members of the school community will have access to a flexible, common system for all their interactions with the school.

Due to the Agile methodology, users were familiar with the software prior to its release. This has reduced the expected time for training and user guidance.

BGS is working with Atturra to offer the modern SIS to other educational institutions. Interested schools can adopt the solution in a modular manner, facilitating earlier deployment and enabling feedback collection while reducing the effort required to switch from systems.

For more information about Scholarion, Atturra’s SIS for schools, see the Scholarion web page.

Technologies

  • Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Experience
  • Microsoft Power Platform
  • Dataverse
Download PDF

Other Client Stories