3 Ways Software Integration Can Benefit Beauty and Wellness Schools
Software integration can help beauty and wellness schools improve back-office operations and gain a better view into satisfactory academic progress.
To prepare students for careers in beauty and wellness, educators must follow strict education guidelines to ensure the health and safety of consumers. It’s not just about giving haircuts. Don’t get us wrong, a bad haircut is painful—but beauty and wellness educators must also ensure that students understand how to use powerful chemicals like bleach and acetone and how to sanitize equipment.
Schools must substantiate student learning by tracking attendance, grades, skills, theory hours, and assignments across different hardware, software, and manual systems. For example, grades are tracked in the LMS, while attendance is tracked using a biometric scanner, and skills are tracked on paper. Having data across disconnected systems doesn’t give administrators a full picture of SAP without significant manual data entry.
But that can be changed through software integration, a term used to describe when your systems are connected and share data. For example, grades from your LMS would automatically go into your SIS.
Here’s how beauty and wellness schools can benefit from every level of integration.
How Integration Streamlines Attendance For Beauty and Wellness Schools
Beauty and wellness schools traditionally use a biometric scanner to collect attendance data. While some scanners are serviced by SIS providers and already integrated, others require manual data entry by staff. Schools that aren’t using biometric scanners largely take attendance using paper and pen, requiring administrators to enter attendance data into the SIS manually.
Even schools using a biometric scanner integrated with their SIS still shoulder the burden of manual data entry in some shape or form. Biometric scanners don’t have an interface to see missed time punches, so administrators don’t know if there are issues with the timestamps until they import the data into the SIS. Then, administrators must check with students and instructors to confirm each missed stamp, and instructors must remember to ping administrators with time adjustments or adjust student time themselves. Administrators spend hours per week chasing down students and instructors to confirm time, which does not establish a strong audit trail.
By implementing an integrated attendance software with a user-friendly interface, administrators can view discrepancies before that data hits the SIS. Depending on your level of integration, if the data is changed on your attendance software, it will automatically change in your SIS. Anytime administrators or instructors change data in CourseKey’s attendance app, they’re required to leave a note explaining the reason for the change, creating a strong audit trail.
With an adjustable, integrated attendance software, you know that your data is high quality and that your audit trail is strong. You don’t have to worry about whether or not a student’s record got updated or be at a loss for words when an accreditor asks why a file was changed.
How Integration Streamlines Grades Entry For Beauty and Wellness Schools
Depending on the size of your beauty and wellness school, manually pulling grades from your LMS and entering them into your SIS could take up to 4 hours daily. Even if it’s only taking 1-2 hours per day, integrating your software eliminates that tedious process, freeing up administrative hours to focus on student success and compliance.
Integration is also beneficial for schools that use software instead of worksheets to track student skills. When your skills tracking software is integrated with your SIS, you eliminate hours of worksheet management every week.
But as with attendance, it’s not just about eliminating hours; It’s about ensuring data quality by eliminating human error. So when your next audit rolls around, you can rest assured knowing that your data is free from human error and has a secure audit trail.
Integration Improves Visibility and Promotes Growth For Beauty and Wellness Schools
By integrating all the different software that beauty and wellness schools use, administrators and
students gain increased visibility to program progress and SAP. As a result, administrators save significant time—a single administrator can save 12 hours weekly—and can instead focus on student success. Administrators also save when preparing for audits and have peace of mind knowing that their data is accurate and ready for review.
Request a demo if you’d like to learn more about how CourseKey integrates with your current systems to streamline back-office tasks and improve data quality while boosting staff and student visibility.
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