Scheduling with Ease and Efficiency

Meet Medicine Hat College, a public comprehensive college serving southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan.

The college is located in the city of Medicine Hat, Alberta, and provides over 6,000 students with an array of choices from apprenticeship trade programs, continuing education studies and courses toward degree completion.

Medicine Hat College was inundated with years of complex spreadsheets, reports and data collection, all being handled manually by a single dedicated individual who would soon retire. In addition, the College’s room booking software was at the end of its life. And, there had been a rumour that the college’s rooms were underutilized. The college was also experiencing difficulties with integration between room bookings and academic scheduling. Talk about operational complexity and an absolute need for powerful and effective scheduling software with an exceptionally efficient platform!

The college’s registrar’s office and their associate vice-president reached out to the Infosilem | Berger-Levrault team to inquire about their scheduling software products in order to meet the college’s overwhelming needs. The vice-president of academic clinched the deal. Strategic efficiency was certainly lacking, even though operationally, Medicine Hat College’s scheduling process was working quite well. An academic scheduling solution was definitely needed.

The college required complex reporting, ability to run scheduling scenarios, and evidence to support decision-making. Countless concerns existed around the quality of room schedules, room inventory and the need to maintain all information in several systems. A software solution with these features was essential for relieving staff from having to send out continuous emails and keeping track of things manually in different systems. An automated and personalized approval workflow in real time was essential! “What-if” scenarios were crucial, as well as generating all reports and timetables from a single solution.

“The system allows you to play with scenarios to see how to approach or manage changes, which is much better that just trying something in the live schedule on a gut instinct and having it be a poor choice”, said Brier Albano, Associate Registrar of Medicine Hat College.

“Both Infosilem Enterprise and Infosilem Timetabler have increased our capacity for decision-making by providing accurate data on our room usage and where our trouble areas are,” added Brier.

Medicine Hat College knew of Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s solid reputation of working with North American colleges and universities. They learned that Infosilem | Berger-Levrault provided better student and faculty scheduling, optimized campus operations and resources, and structured all operations through powerful algorithms.

With Infosilem’s Enterprise software, room bookings are optimized. With Infosilem Timetabler student’s choices are maximized through enhanced course scheduling. The ideal mix!

“Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s products provided the most functionality and they had exceptional peer-to-peer reviews. Other organizations already using Infosilem | Berger-Levrault had indicated that they really loved the people they worked with from sales to implementation,” said Brier.

“I cannot say enough kind things about Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s entire team’s suggestions, guidance and overall knowledge of the products. They understood what we needed and what we were saying. Infosilem | Berger-Levrault certainly knows how the post secondary world works. Everyone involved took the time to determine how the language we use at our college maps to Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s software, and then used that language with us in order to make implementation very easy. All our data needs were more than met.

We met many amazing people through the implementation process. It’s fair to say that the most positive Infosilem | Berger-Levrault experience we had is the skill level of the people who work for the company,” added Brier.

The teamwork provided by Infosilem | Berger-Levrault certainly set Medicine Hat College on the perfect course to address all of their needs.

As a result of Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s ability to align with Medicine Hat College’s business process, it was a perfect fit. Infosilem | Berger-Levrault understood the College’s exact needs.

The software solutions were able to recreate the College’s current processes and created options for potential future processes. And, the great news is that Medicine Hat College anticipates an approximate 70% savings of time. The college’s previous modus operandi involved two IT specialists and a student service staff member. With Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s software, Medicine Hat College now only has the need for one IT specialist who can complete the roll over flawlessly.

“Infosilem | Berger-Levrault gave us the chance to take the success we had in the way we had been scheduling and grow. Using our current scheduler had been successful for us, but the Infosilem | Berger-Levrault product allowed us to focus less on recopying data, and focus more on creative solutions for our challenges,” said Brier.

“By providing data, improving our ability to play with scenarios and recording institutional knowledge into the product, we have reduced our overall risk and expanded our creativity to make schedules that work for staff, students and faculty,” added Brier

“We also see the possibilities of further improvement as we work more in Infosilem Timetabler and adjust some of our workflows to suit the efficient new product.”

Brier Albano

Associate Registrar

“Infosilem | Berger-Levrault’s products provided the most functionality and they had exceptional peer-to-peer reviews. Other organizations already using Infosilem | Berger-Levrault had indicated that they really loved the people they worked with from sales to implementation.”

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