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Why Aspire Early Education selected Xap as its CCMS partner of choice
Jason Roberts
Sep 03, 2024
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Aspire Early Education has quickly become a deeply respected example of a quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) provider that is simultaneously scaling its business whilst meeting the needs of the families and communities whom it serves.
“Aspire was established in 2018 with the opening of our first centre in Cranbourne West. The Group has now grown to 22 operational centres across Victoria and Western Australia,” Kate Banks, Senior Business Support Officer at Aspire said.“Before opening the doors of each new centre, we work to gain a deeper understanding of the local community. Aspects such as connecting with local businesses, schools and support services is crucial to us, as those elements allow us to tailor our programs to better meet the needs of the children and families.”
Over time Aspire has become increasingly aware of the demands that their growing business and ‘high touch’ service offering was having on the broader team and came to realise that their software solutions, particularly their child care management system (CCMS), was simply not able to keep up.
“That was a big aha moment for us,” Ms Banks shared. “It's not always easy to acknowledge that the systems and processes that we have in place are not fit for purpose anymore. At the end of the day it is our children, families and team who are our priority and if we need to make a change to support them, then we just have to.”
The search for a new CCMS provider - Defining the decision criteria
Having made the decision to find a new system Aspire moved quickly to launch a consultation process across the Group that aimed to understand what team members and families actually wanted in a CCMS partner.
“Our consultations were very revealing and helped us narrow down precisely our requirements when it came to a new CCMS partner,” Ms Banks said.
“Ease of use and reliability were top of the list followed closely by a smooth process for enrolments, informative financial reports, helpful guides and of course a consistent, accessible and friendly support team.”
Importantly, a number of key stakeholders also recognised that any CCMS partner of choice must not only deliver on their key criteria now but also be able to cope with the inevitable increase in demands that a rapidly growing business experiences as it grows.
“Future proofing our business from a software perspective was also a very important concern for us. We needed to ensure that our CCMS platform of choice could handle scale and come on that journey with us,” Ms Banks added.
All roads lead to Xap - The next generation CCMS provider that covered all bases
From the get go, Ms Banks and Aspire were impressed with how Xap coordinated their demo’s and supported the team’s initial discovery and research needs.
“After having a demo with Xap, the functionality was a clear stand out. We want our centre managers to spend their time focused on our educators, children and families, not spending hours on administrative tasks,” Ms Banks said.
The team were particularly struck by how much attention to detail was embedded in the Xap platform, how intuitive it felt for the centre leaders and how easy to use it was.
Other key standouts included:
- tailored onboarding and change management process pages
- easy filtering and bulk email functionality
- real time reminders for expiring health documents or CCS changes and;
- streamlined uploading of documents to customised enrolment forms
“From the initial enquiry from Aspire we knew that we were dealing with a high quality, incredibly professional ECEC provider and felt very excited to be able to showcase what Xap has to offer to Kate and her team,” Xap CEO Sean Murphy said.
“A pleasure to work with” - Xap onboarding process hits the mark
For many senior leaders, concerns about the prospect of implementing change across dynamic organisations are never far from the surface, especially in a sector like ECEC where teams are deeply invested in their day to day roles and disruptions can have far reaching consequences.
Thankfully for Aspire and their Xap experience these concerns proved unfounded.
“To be honest prior to onboarding commencing I was a bit nervous about moving from a system that we knew the ins & outs of to Xap. But as soon as it kicked off I knew very quickly that we had made the right decision,” Ms Banks said.
Xap’s onboarding team, who have been trained specifically in change management and process implementation techniques, work hard to create a comprehensive, customised onboarding calendar that ensures that training sessions are set at just the right pace with an appropriate combination of information and tips and tricks.
“Our overall experience with Xap has been amazing,” Ms Banks said, “It is truly rare to find a partner that mirrors our values, matches our knowledge base and provides us with exactly what we need to continue to scale business and serve our families and children.”
On the Xap side, the team is equally thrilled to have Aspire on board.
“Kate and her team’s commitment to ensuring that the onboarding was a success was a testament to the quality of the partnership and we are very excited about what the future holds,” Mr Murphy said.
To learn more about Aspire’s journey with Xap and what makes Xap special reach out to the team by clicking this link.
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