Overview
A robust district program searching for more growth and support from its software partner
Time savings, family engagement, and program visibility are becoming quick benefits of making a software switch
A team that can now focus on the big picture of program growth, with Arux doing the rest
Program introduction
South Lyon Community Schools (CS) is a public school district in South Lyon, MI, located inside the Detroit metro area. South Lyon CS provides a Kids Club before and after school program, summer camp, a tuition-based preschool, and a preschool Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) to families in the community.
Program breakdown:
For the Kids Club before and after school program, the district serves around 400 kids in eight elementary schools.
South Lyon CS serves around 200-300 preschool kids in three locations.
South Lyon CS’s summer camp program runs preschool-5th grade with about 220 kids.
Bonnie Call and Kristi Cavicchiolo help run South Lyon’s Kids Club, camp, and preschool programming at the South Lyon Early Childhood Center.
Setting
For a district offering such robust programming, South Lyon needed to feel adequately supported by their software platform. As they experienced growth, they wanted to see that same growth from their software provider, which wasn’t happening as quickly as they had hoped. Billing needed to be updated frequently, and customer support wasn’t meeting the task. Call and Cavicchiolo were losing trust.
In a particular moment of frustration, it just happened that South Lyon received a note introducing Arux — an introduction that came at the right time.
“We heard from you on a day when we had a particularly high level of frustration. We received your note and called you right away. And we were impressed with how quickly we heard from Arux and were able to schedule a demo. Things went quickly from there.”
Solution
Family engagement
Since beginning the journey with Arux, the first thing that Call, Cavicchiolo, and their team have experienced is a shift in community engagement. Parents feel empowered with Arux. They can manage their accounts in the system and have a lot more awareness of what’s going on with their schedules.
“If they want to change their schedule, they can go in and change it, we approve it, and there’s email confirmation. There’s a lot of confirmation on the Arux side for parents; they feel more empowered and get instant feedback from the system, which helps us.”
Time savings through operations and reporting
Along with increased community engagement, Call and Cavicchiolo are already receiving the gift of time through various features within Arux. Let’s start with the Admin Dashboard.
“We both love the Admin Dashboard. We log in in the morning and see everything with the program: how many accounts are outstanding and how many people are making changes. It’s great. We don’t have to dig for anything. It’s right there on the screen in front of us.”
Another way Arux will save the South Lyon CS team a significant amount of time is the software’s reporting abilities, specifically when running Child Information Cards to meet Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) child care licensing requirements.
“We would spend half our summer running the Child Information Cards because we had to touch every account individually, bring it up, and print it. It was very time-consuming. This will be a huge time saver.”
In addition to streamlining state-mandated reporting, Call is excited about how Arux is already creating efficiencies in the program’s end-of-month financials. Using Arux’s Deposit Summary and Deposit Details report, Call can now click a button and deliver broken-down deposit history to the board and finance office.
“Our board is really happy with the reporting. The time saving for end-of-month financials alone is incredible. It saves me a whole day’s worth of work.”
Program visibility through the Admin Dashboard
Arux’s Admin Dashboard is the primary page where admin users can view the program's current status, including timely situations like past-due accounts. With this new view inside their programming, the Admin Dashboard provides Call and Cavicchiolo much more insight into each other’s day-to-day operations.
“I honestly cannot say enough about the Admin Dashboard. I absolutely love it. Bonnie does a lot of the billing and the schedule changes, all the ins and outs of every system we use. In our previous software, I (Cavicchiolo and other team members) never knew how many parents were past due or how many schedule change requests came in. We see all of that now.”
With Arux’s Admin Dashboard, the South Lyon CS team has a better picture of their day. Again, they find themselves more on top of items like past due accounts because it’s easy for the team to observe everything and act.
System knowledge
The South Lyon team has hit the ground running with Arux. Working with the Arux Customer Success team, Call and Cavicchiolo recalled a successful software rollout, including onsite training with the internal team, which led to a positive experience for South Lyon families.
“They (Arux CS) were so helpful with the rollout of this program and getting us ready. With our previous software, we did it all. We taught our staff everything. We created step-by-step guides for our parents, and Arux has already done all that for us. We feel very supported.”
And even though South Lyon initially went with Arux because of many of the features we’ve outlined above, the Customer Success team “sold” them, including onsite training. And even beyond the initial rollout, the level of support hasn’t wavered.
“We went with Arux, but we didn’t know the level of customer support until we started using Arux. And for a lot of companies, the initial rollout is good. But you haven’t forgotten us. You’re still working with us and still very responsive.”
Going Forward
As Call, Cavicchiolo, and the South Lyon team look ahead, they see much more opportunity to focus on growing the Kids Club, preschool, and summer camp programming with these new-found efficiencies from Arux. Along with the gift of time, they can now think bigger, beyond day-to-day operations, and are excited to access the benefits of a modern software solution fully.
“Growing the program, spending more time on the program — I can do that now. You’re freeing up time for us to do other things instead of busy paperwork 24/7. The depth of the actual program has so much that it can do, but it is also so intuitive. Arux makes us more organized in such an easy way.”