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Cloud-based day care management benefits teachers, parents & kids.

Emma Norrie has saved herself 10 working hours a week so far – and she is very happy about it.

Norrie is general manager of MyKindy, a new day care group which currently numbers two centres in Henderson and Otara, involving more than 220 children and 30-35 staff. She is aiming to increase MyKindy to at least 10-15 centres across the country in coming years – and the reason she is so happy is that the 10 hours she has saved is "just the beginning" of a childcare management system she feels will help power that growth.

The system, Discover by Xplor and new component Playground*, is an end-to-end, cloud-based childcare management software which she says benefits administrators, teachers, parents and children.

"That's who gains most – the kids," she says. "We have only just started using Discover and I am still training my staff – and I am already saving 10 hours a week.

"So we have a long way to go and we will be able to make many more savings [of hours]; I'd say 10 hours saved will probably double to 20. That is time we can put into the children and doing what we love doing – teaching – rather than being caught up doing admin all the time."

It's a familiar tale for users of Discover by Xplor. One South Island early childhood education (ECE) centre was wading through 29 hours of administration a week before adopting Discover. That has now been reduced to five hours a week, says chief commercial officer for Discover by Xplor, Richard North.

"It's an amazing time-saving system; just using the digital sign-in alone can save a centre 30 minutes of admin a day," he says.

That was especially so during the pandemic. North lives in Christchurch and watched as a teacher at his kindy dealt with the difficulties of signing in his four-year-old son: "It was all manual, all pens and paper; she was having to sanitise each pen each time for each parent." There is no comparison with a contactless, digital sign-in and sign-out system like Discover.

Other features of the system include effortless planning, tracking and recording of children's activity during the day – and fast, expressive communications with parents.

Discover Interface. Photo/Supplied

Discover, along with Playground, doesn't just cover what the child is learning today, with stills and/or video, but also records and sends to parents automated nappy checks, documents sleep times, sunscreen applications, feeding times and consumption, and any medical events.

On top of this, if a child has a bruised arm, for example, the parents are alerted through an app on their phone and sent a figure of the child with the bruise highlighted on screen, plus what remedies have been applied.

"It's a major advance, a real game-changer," says North. "Many parents are working hard and those regular communications that show how their child is doing are important and highly valued – and this isn't information just let loose on the internet; we have bank-level security on our interface with parents."

For Norrie, working with Discover by Xplor has already – even in a short time – proven itself as a powerful tool in her new business.

"Any start-up nearly always struggles with cash flow and Discover's automated processes help a great deal," she says.

"One of the problems we used to have was cash flow, as parents forgot or missed payments. It would take hours chasing things up," she says.

Now Discover's automation has taken over, applying automatic direct debits and significantly reducing bad debts.

With the pay parity gap an ongoing pain point for the local sector, Norrie says: "We have finally been able to meet the pay parity requirements for our staff because our financial forecasting has improved so much using Discover. This in itself is a huge step forward for us, it just feels so good because our industry works hard for every cent."

Compliance is also a major, time-consuming headache: "There is a lot of compliance ground to cover [with the Ministry of Education] and, when the pandemic was at its height, we also had compliance messages coming in from the Ministry of Health. There was a lot to do."

However, Discover is government-certified and integrated with MOE requirements, so compliance again requires much less time. As does the customised and analytical reports the system can generate easily, something Norrie says would previously have taken them "a month of Sundays".

Then there's after sales service: "With my previous supplier, we had a problem with parents being charged twice over Christmas," she says. "When we contacted the supplier, it turned out that side of things had been contracted out – and they pointed us in their direction.

"The contractor was based in Australia and it was Christmas, so we had no show – not a very good look for us. But there's no problem with Discover; their customer service is all in one. They have a great support team and they are also very good at product road-mapping: they incorporate feedback from users into the product as they go, which shows their commitment to the local sector."

North says Playground, fully integrated with Discover, represents even better parent engagement, health and safety, more convenient and efficient planning and learning – and a "seamless all-in-one experience".

Discover is well positioned to make a significant contribution to the sector as the only end-to-end student management software in New Zealand. The goodwill is real: "We are currently working with the Ministry of Education to encourage greater uptake in new technology and streamline digital education processes across New Zealand," says North.

"We're hoping to make the compliance process easier for the ECE community."

*Xplor Technologies was originally founded in New Zealand in 1994 (then as Transaction Services Group) and is now a global platform integrating SaaS solutions, embedded payments, and Commerce Accelerating Technologies for "everyday life" businesses in education and other sectors. Xplor has a team of over 200 in New Zealand, and acquired New Zealand's leading childcare management software platform, Discover last year.

Discover by Xplor is a modern, cloud-based childcare administration management product that makes childcare simple by providing smarter, easy-to-use systems that eliminate wasted administration time. Managing inquiries and marketing, enrolments, waitlists, room transitions, rosters and ratios, visitor tracking, HR, tablet-based attendance, payments from bank feeds, invoicing, and all other aspects of day-to-day childcare administration – Discover is also certified by the Ministry of Education for the New Zealand market. Discover was acquired by Xplor Technologies in 2021. To learn more visit: https://www.discoverchildcare.co.nz/