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August 23, 2024

Xavier College begins a process of modernising its student information systems on Dynamics 365 and AI, unlocking powerful insights

Xavier College was grappling with disparate legacy systems and data fragmentation, which hindered staff from accessing information. As part of its digital transformation, the school has implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 to consolidate data, streamline processes and enhance productivity. Dynamics 365 has allowed the school to simplify its architecture, fostering innovation and data-driven decision-making. Coupled with the school’s migration to an Azure cloud environment, Dynamics 365 allows the school to explore AI for automation and Power Platform for user-specific portals.

Xavier College

When Xavier College first embraced Microsoft Dynamics 365, its initial objective was to use the platform’s customer relationship management (CRM) functionality. The school, based in the Australian state of Victoria, migrated all its contact records into the system. This provided a comprehensive view of its stakeholders, from students and teachers to staff, parents and alumni. It was a crucial step in better understanding its community and what information it needed to deliver from its systems to its users.

Recognising the potential of Dynamics 365, the school began exploring further ways to enhance its operations. For instance, its IT team is implementing Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to automate marketing activities and build tailored customer journeys and campaigns based on deep insights about its community’s preferences and behaviours. This data-driven approach will allow the school to engage more effectively with students, parents, and staff.

Simplifying its technology infrastructure has worked. Like many other Australian schools, Xavier College was grappling with a complex network of platforms and IT products, with its data scattered across 130 disparate systems. An extensive six-month mapping exercise allowed it to understand its existing architecture and where various datasets resided. Since implementing Dynamics 365, the school has used significantly fewer products, consolidating to just 60 core platforms

“Implementing Dynamics 365 looks like being a game changer for us. It will allow us to innovate quickly, simplify our architecture, and serve our community better by delivering the right information to their fingertips when and where they need it.”

Patrick Winter, Head of Technology and Innovation, Xavier College

The College was able to migrate all current and historic student and staff data onto Microsoft Azure in less than seven months. All its data now resides in Azure, managed efficiently through Dataverse and Synapse. By consolidating data from multiple systems, the school eliminated the need to manage data across several disparate systems. This consolidation also gave Xavier College the foundation to begin exploring AI's benefits.

“It’s crucial that leaders in the education industry think rigorously about how to make their data work for them in smarter, better and quicker ways. We tend to rely on some outdated legacy systems in this sector because they’re what we are used to. But when we took that leap of faith and committed to the early steps of getting our data foundation and cloud environment right with Azure, other possibilities just opened up to us.”

Patrick Winter, Head of Technology and Innovation, Xavier College

Looking ahead, Xavier College plans to expand its use of Dynamics 365. The next opportunity the College is investigating is integrating its finance systems into the platform, to enable smoother financial management and reporting.

“Microsoft has been great about getting us into their offices and in front of the right people to talk about how its products and offerings can serve our organisation. We’re especially excited about Fabric. We know this will be yet another game changer from Microsoft in the cloud space regarding what we can do with our data and how we understand it.”

Patrick Winter, Head of Technology and Innovation, Xavier College

Improving user insights and productivity

While every staff member was onboarded onto the old SIS, only around 10% were actively using it. The challenge lay in optimising the system to ensure staff could easily access information. The school recognised that modernising and operationalising data accessibility was key. The new platform will enable staff members to access information quickly.with a view to achieving increased productivity and effective outcomes.

Xavier College has also adopted Azure Entra ID as the gateway for platform access – a strategic move that has provided valuable insights into user engagement, tracking visits to various platforms. For example, the school will now have visibility over the click-through rate of its email campaigns and can see exactly how many parents click on a link, read the event page and sign up to register. This granular detail will allow teams to efficiently hone their marketing strategies to be more effective and engaging.

Connecting the community through portals

One of the most significant user experience (UX) challenges the school faced was not being able to provide people with data when and where they needed it. In the past, users repeatedly had to fill out complex forms because data ingestion was not seamless. Addressing this challenge became a top priority.

The school has addressed this challenge by building user portals within Dynamics 365 specific to each user group. For example, the parent portal, launched in 2024, allows parents to quickly access a simplified view of their child’s timetable and school reporting. The portal is helping parents connect seamlessly with their children’s education, with 3,500 parents having used it. The school also plans to launch a ‘future families’ portal for potential students and parents, a student portal and an alumni portal. This way, people within the Xavier College community can feel connected to the school from when they enrol or apply for a staffing position until long after their time at the school ends.

Together, these portals represent a massive shift in how users interact with data. The school has a vast amount of data in the cloud but realised that users needed specific information at their fingertips. Users can also delve deeper into data by running analytics, even within a vast dataset, using PowerBI. The portals strike a crucial balance between providing immediate access and in-depth analysis.

Exploring AI and automation

As it looks to the future, Xavier College is actively exploring the potential of AI through Azure OpenAI and Azure Cognitive Services. One notable project that has already delivered benefits involves digitising several years’ worth of paper records, including leave applications, long-service leave forms and staffroom reports. Rather than dedicate a small team to scan, sort and upload these documents manually, Azure Services was used to build a solution.

Azure Computer Vision and Cognitive Services played a pivotal role in scanning and extracting information from these documents. The system could verify the accuracy of extracted data by cross-referencing it with existing information. For instance, if a long-service leave application was submitted by a staff member with only two years of service, the system flagged it as an inconsistency. This intelligent error-handling mechanism streamlined document processing. What would have taken six months to complete manually was achieved in just 1.5 hours, thanks to the efficiency of the automated system.

With generative AI opening up new possibilities, the school is now exploring the integration of custom Azure OpenAI models to help students learn. Essentially, this would use data from curriculum and textbooks stored in the school’s Azure database to provide precise responses to student queries. Instead of relying on unfiltered internet sources, students can access reliable information tailored to their educational needs. This level of control over AI applications aligns perfectly with the school’s educational goals.

Looking ahead, Xavier College is excited about the potential of Microsoft Fabric to transform how it conceptualises, stores and uses its data.

Find out more about Xavier College on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

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