You may be making major school inventory mistakes without even realizing it.
When your district invests in an inventory system, the success of your technology adoption depends mainly on its users. Staff must use the system regularly for the system’s data to be accurate and provide value. We recommend that school districts have an inventory “champion” who continually encourages and educates staff to use the system effectively.
Greg Wright, Instructional Materials Coordinator at Leander ISD, has spent 12 years coordinating textbooks and instructional materials for 38,000 students at 42 campuses. During that time, he has championed the use of TIPWeb-IM to more effectively and efficiently manage the use and purchase of instructional materials.
Nick DePauw, Director of Information Technology at Patterson School District in northern California, knows the challenges of keeping inventory data clean. With 8 campuses, 3 district sites, and over 6,200 students, DePauw oversees over 14,000 assets in the district. In this guest blog post, he shares his tips for motivating district and campus staff to execute daily inventory management strategies in pursuit of clean data.
Your homegrown inventory management system isn’t a sustainable solution.
You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your homegrown inventory management system. You built it because your district didn’t find existing software that met your unique needs. However, while the advantages of a custom-designed system can be alluring at first, the risks and costs over time exceed the initial benefits.
Many districts today are recognizing the headaches associated with maintaining their homegrown inventory management system are too great to manage. Instead, they’re opting for a third-party vendor developed and supported application. The result is greater transparency, increased efficiencies, and cost savings.
With the influx of technology at your campuses each year, it’s crucial to measure how effective your processes are for managing these devices rather than just assuming your policies are working. Each decision you make should be informed by data, and the result of these efforts should be cataloged for future reference.
When managing an asset inventory program, districts have a litany of data points from which to make strategic decisions to optimize people and processes. All this information can sometimes cause paralysis at your district and stall your program.
How do you know which data to track to get the most out of your inventory management program?
When it comes to managing instructional materials, it takes a team of people to keep everything running smoothly. As you start to plan for next year, one way to improve instructional material management efficiency is clearly defining and communicating policies and procedures through a manual you distribute to your staff.
Transferring, assigning, auditing and budgeting for instructional initiatives is a district-wide, all building, all department challenge. Think of a typical school day. Assets are moving from room to room, person to person, and even building to building – How do school and department inventory spreadsheets and district financial asset systems keep up?
Providing the best possible learning environment for students is the primary objective of the 21st century classroom. To accomplish this, schools must increase the effectiveness of every dollar spent on providing this educational experience. Unfortunately, not all textbook inventory systems align with this goal and can unnecessarily increase the workload and cost for schools and districts.
An efficient textbook inventory process focuses on inventory transparency and accountability options designed to match the needs of school assignment and student/teacher obligations. Effectively accessing inventory data available across other schools prior to placing an order for materials focuses on meeting the real‐time and anticipated needs for instructional materials utilized in the district.