Welcome to Broekman K-12 Technology Consultants! We offer strategic vendor-independent consultancy and technical services for schools and colleges at affordable rates.
We are here because many independent schools can not hire every specialist they need and tend to rely on vendors whose goals are lock-in and ongoing service on often needlessly complex products. We are here to support your school -as needed- with a collective of specialists with extensive Education background.
‘Big meaning’ or ‘Big data’ – your pick
We are somewhat different in that we see IT foremost as an ecosystem that must amplify the capabilities of your staff. This requires a vision, some planning and considered changes, policies and resourcing to get good outcomes and have systems be meaningful. Technically, we tend to use workflow automation, systems integration and data processing to extract meaning and provide actionable information, when needed, to the right persons.
Consultancy Services
- Business Process Transformation (data driven) and Solution Design
- Data Analyses / Forecasting, Forensic fact finding
- Database & Student Management Systems Specialist
- Systems opportunity Audit Report
- Strategic IT planning (also via Dave Youl from Navigate Education)
Other Services
- Statistical data processing to derive meaningful insights for educators.
- Everything from Business Analyses to Acceptance Testing
- Systems integration (Active Directory, LMS, SMS, ERP, POS, Banking)
- Expert Level SQL/PL (DB2/Oracle/MS/Postgres)
- Data migration, normalisation, scrubbing, extraction for BI and AI.
- Student/Learning Management Implementation & Migration
- Data/trigger based reports, workflows, communications
- Logo/Graphic/Web Design (via our business partner Boris Vasiljivic)
- Marketing, Web Design and Search Engine optimisation (via Sydney Web Design)
Vision for success
We see a large scope for improvement in moving from on-demand systems (such as SMS and BI tools) to data driven, automated process support in nearly all areas of a school.
When appropriate information automatically goes to the right person, at the right time and when directly actionable – your staff will be more empowered and efficient. Add automatic escalation and reporting and those same benefits come to your educational leaders and executives.
What sets us apart is that we never look at a solution in isolation. We instead prefer a coherent approach so every part aligns with the whole, such as organisational goals, learning frameworks and school culture.
Why the best product may still fail
Even when moving to the best product in the market, a project’s success is not guaranteed. The reality is that project, risk and change management are often not part of a school’s daily business. Nor is broad adoption straightforward. Add to this data of questionable quality, limited systems’ integration, time-poor staff and as a result, new projects typically yield a less than optimal experience for staff, parents, students.
We can help you choose products and vendors that are a strategic fit for your school. We make sure we understand your school and assist in getting the resource and project planning right and keep vendors honest, plus offer the additional skills and resources to get the job done.
Last but not least, we are here to get more out of your existing systems, integrate them better and extract more meaningful data from them to ensure your technology is meaningful, saves time, keeps morale up and improves student outcomes and service levels.
Product Development – Pilot Schools Wanted
We are currently looking for schools interested in co-developing* the below product of other concepts or products that you don’t think are available in the market. We have prior production experience with building and implementing the listed and many others that we are not listing here – but these still need some development towards a commercial offering. For pilot schools, we offer -at minimum- reduced license fees, free setup and influence on the design in exchange for us getting a reference site and feedback.
- A loosely coupled integration service, able to connect your student management with an LMS and Active Directory + any other data source, with a web-based configuration. The SMS – LMS sync for example, can do an automatic yearly roll-over, cleans-up short class memberships (mistakes), can create courses for each class, or based on course/subject, or based on any other known group: for example, new staff can automatically enrol in an induction course. It can also sync marks from quizzes and assignments back into your SMS – at least if your SMS provider has not closed the door on your own data!
