Cleburne ISD Implements Brightly for Better Reporting and Visibility, Saving Director of Operations Critical Time
Cleburne ISD was using Eduphoria’s add-on work order products for a couple years; however, it was not meeting the needs of the Maintenance Department, nor the Business Office. Barry Hipp, the Senior Director of District Operations, needed robust, easy-to-use reporting abilities to track labor hours and costs. “Eduphoria has limited reporting capabilities. I had to extract the data and manipulate it in Excel manually – it was very time-consuming,” said Barry
“As a member of TASBO, I saw seminars of Brighlty’s solutions and talked to several districts near me using Brightly. They described the capabilities of the system and how they are using it in their departments,” Barry said. After his evaluation process, Barry decided Brightly's Work & Asset™ and Technology™ solutions were the right choice, and the software was within the district’s budget. “At prior districts, I used software that was not built for education, and the features were not compatible with us. Brightly ‘talks’ education and is conducive to our needs.”
After just a couple months, Work & Asset was rolled out district-wide to Barry’s staff and to faculty to enter requests. “We planned to roll out Work & Asset in the summer before students and faculty were back. This way, my maintenance supervisor responsible for the system had time to perfect it, and we had time to fully disable Eduphoria, so all work orders are only in one system,” said Barry. The district plans to initiate its preventive maintenance program next. “It will be great for all our inspections, such as fire extinguishers and other life safety equipment,” noted Barry.
As soon as Brightly was operational within the district, Barry could run reports with rich data. “The reports are already pre-built. With just the click of a button, I have the reports available to me,” Barry said. He looks at reports that indicate productivity levels and costs, which helps Barry ensure the team’s time is spent efficiently. He also uses reports that demonstrate labor hours, ticket costs and project costs at both the district and individual campus levels.
I can run over 800 reports with Brightly, and it is so easy. It has already provided huge time savings for me.
"With Eduphoria, it took me more than an hour to generate each report,” said Barry. He also has already shown several Brightly reports to the Board. “They are easier for the Board to read and understand than the old reports.”
“I would tell other districts to not wait to implement Brightly. I waited several years and should have purchased Brightly sooner. If lack of funds is a concern, it shouldn’t be; I will get back over $5,000 per year in productivity and will be able to easily identify holes and areas for improvement. Public schools face the same challenges regardless of where you’re located. We all face diminishing budgets, less manpower, more students and deteriorating buildings. Brightly can make operations more efficient and help justify keeping resources and job positions to management and your CFO.”
