Business Services

Objective:  Enable every department to provide great service to the district’s employees, despite continual budget pressure. 

What we do
Districts are constantly challenged to do more with less. Many district leaders believe there are substantial cost savings from streamlining their operations.  They are usually right.  And service does not have to suffer; usually, it gets better.  An efficiently run organization makes employees feel good about where they work, and the community feel good about where it is sending its children and how its taxes are being spent. 

ViKiwi helps districts streamline the delivery of services such as child nutrition, transportation, janitorial services, building repairs, purchasing and human resources, significantly decreasing general overhead expenses and leaving a larger share of the budget for teaching and learning.  And we apply technology to allow departments to constantly see how they are doing, enabling them to fix problems before they are chronic.   

ViKiwi’s professionals have designed and implemented many systems that have dramatically increased productivity by piggy-backing on two business trends:

1. Automation that allows customers to access information and perform transactions themselves;  (Many Americans now go to their computers to shop, manage their finances, schedule essential services, apply for jobs, track packages they’ve sent, and many other tasks)
2. Increasing employee accountability (see SchoolMeasures).

The technologies that underlie these trends can help school districts reduce the cost of providing the myriad of services that are essential to the operation of the district.

For example, automation or increasing employee accountability (or a combination of both) can reduce the cost of:

• Providing building maintenance
• Resolving errors in employee paychecks
• Changing employee personal information
• Purchasing
• Hiring new employees

These are just a few examples of the many opportunities where districts can use technology to eliminate unnecessary handling and maintain a high level of customer service despite shrinking budgets. 

How we do it
We study each business process end-to-end.  We listen to the people doing the work and the people who use the services, and design solutions that usually comprise technology and changes to the way work is performed. Implementation of any system only proceeds after the leaders of the district are satisfied with the cost-benefit of the project. We help the district decide what to build, using district and ViKiwi resources, and what to buy.  And we help the district with implementation, the most important factor that can determine success or failure.  

ViKiwi manages the project from start to finish, coordinating the work of vendors and internal departments, building and fitting all the pieces together to yield a result that is a win-win for everybody.

Links to interesting case studies and news articles:

1. Getting the best return on technology spending
2. Making cuts in K-12 budgets less painful for students 
3. Dramatic service improvements without increasing resources