Stress Free Budgeting: Software Onboarding

Simple, stress-free onboarding for effective budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting.

1. The burden of onboarding new software

Change management is a systematic approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organisations from a current state to a desired future state. It involves planning, implementing, and monitoring the change to ensure its success and minimise disruption.

When onboarding users to our budgeting software, we all know it isn't "just the small matter of migrating data from system to system", so we've crafted an approach to make it feel like it's "just the small matter of migrating data from system to system".

Our budgeting team and our technical infrastructure has been developed to ensure every new customer has the right level of information and a seamless introduction to our software.

2. Meet the onboarding team

Simone Gray

SBS Budgets is sophisticated software to apply the subtleties of education finance. When training, I believe in basing teachings on user's live data if possible, and reinforcing the theoretical side of budgeting alongside the practical.

Sarah Gura-Lowe

By being on-hand and accessible to users throughout each stage in the process, I am able to ensure that the finer details and user requests throughout budgeting migration are looked after.

Marcus Peedell 

Onboarding new planners is also a good way to monitor and ensure our software is continually used easily by customers and SBS staff alike. A fresh pair of eyes on our features gives powerful insight for continous improvement. 

3. Our stress-free approach to onboarding

Our onboarding process is in three stages, so the implementation is carefully managed, with users supported every step of the way. This designed to take the stress out of it.

Implementation

The first stage is implementation which is started from the day one of your subscription. A member of the budgeting team will be your dedicated set up and implementation manager to ensure you have a working budget, bespoke to your needs. This implementation manager is a dedicated consultant with a wealth of knowledge about education finance, and will be available from day one to help manage your implementation. We work with you to capture and populate data from your current software or spreadsheets and then we'll migrate this into the system. There will be ongoing communication during set up to ensure the software is being created bespoke to your operating model.

We've found that the implementation stage naturally provides a good opportunity for trusts to reflect on their use of data. From here, you can streamline, cleanse and start fresh on budgeting if applicable to your situation.

Training

During the implementation stage, training - bespoke to your requirements - will be organised to follow shortly after users can readily login to their planners. The training is conducted on the school/trust's own data. In the sessions we welcome questions and scenarios specific to your budget planning and education finance.

Aftercare

You'll have ongoing service desk support from day one of your subscription to reach one of our dedicated consultants and have your instant queries answered. You'll also get regular account management throughout the year to make sure you're fully satisfied with the product and getting everything you need and deserve from your budget planning.

Our service stats on a typical autumn term are:

• 49.7% of queries resolved in under an hour
• 75.2% of queries resolved on the same day
• Average customer experience rating is 9.3/10

4. Guidance and training

In addition to the formal training as part of the three stage onboarding process, we have a wealth of guidance via SBS Assist, providing users with easy access support at their fingertips.

Our guides include:

• Setup of data sync tools
• Report setup
• Staffing guidance (How to add a custom date with inflation, How to add a new custom scale date, How to edit a custom scale)

If you don't find the answer to your query, we can create your ideal 1-1 or group training course or you can call our service desk for adhoc support.

5. A stress-free future

Over 15+ years we've devised a service desk that provides gratification and clear, practical advice from an education management standpoint. We are committed to Continual Service Improvement (CSI), reviewing how we work so we can ensure effective and responsive support for all customers. Through the use of secure remote support software we are able to access your systems to help identify issues and ensure a swift,  efficient resolution without interrupting you or the school day.

6. How our users have found the onboarding process

"The onboarding team worked with me on the setup in a way that reflected the reporting needs of the College Financial Forecasting Return (CFFR). I was promised a 2 week onboard and SBS delivered brilliantly."

"The first stage was for the SBS Budgets team to import all of the school’s chart of accounts, staff contracts and non-staffing income and expenditure. This was a seamless process. It was quick and easy to provide the data needed and SBS did all the setting up in time for training."

7. Let's discuss your onboarding!

Find out how easy it could be for your school or trust

Book your discovery call ⇢