The Senatical Solution

Senatical is a complete school information management solution for administrators, teachers and parents.

Choosing a system

The idea of changing key processes in your school such as report writing and managing various types of information can be daunting. With all the different software products available it is not easy to determine what the best choice is for your school’s unique requirements. The biggest problem with comparing software on paper, is that most systems are very similar in what they are supposed to do. Software brochures give limited insight in how a system works under-the-hood, i.e. the quality of calculations, data storage, speed, scalability, maintainability, reliability etc. Shiny brochures may tell more about the budget of the sales and marketing department, than about the quality of the software itself. Ease of use only becomes apparent when you actually use the system yourself at your own school.

We have assisted schools moving over from numerous local and international commercial systems. What sets us apart from the rest, is our exceptionally easy-to-use and intuitive teacher interface and our personal support.

Our Story

The Senatical system has been the #1 choice (tried and tested) for over 10 years at the majority of top private schools in Zimbabwe. More recently, Zimbabwean non-private schools as well as schools in Mozambique and Zambia have also come on board. We have continued to evolve substantially since we first started, with new features seamlessly being added throughout. We are proud to say that over all these years, the software has never let one school down. All calculations have been spot on, and all deadlines have been met.

We have built our system from the ground up, which is an enormous strength. Many popular school software packages have limitations from piecing together different modules from outsourced programming teams around the world.

Support Throughout

We pride ourselves on our fantastic service and support. When we receive a query, we look into it on your school server itself in real time so that we can give quick and to-the-point feedback.

As a small company we are able to provide excellent support, better than large companies that have multiple layers between the programming team and yourself. It is an enormous strength to have our support staff and the developers all in the same team. Because the developers know the product inside-out, they can answer your queries better than anyone else.

Also, the direct feedback developers get from schools has proven to be instrumental in further improving and expanding the software.

Annually we offer a collective power users seminar, hosted in Harare. This full day seminar serves as a refresher course for all of the power users. Heads and bursars are invited in addition to the day-to-day system administrators. On the day we cover the software from start to finish, stressing any recent additions, with focus on queries from our users. We also get user input for our road map for future development. We are truly steered by the collective of schools using our system.

Easy!

Senatical is so easy to use that it is embraced by even the most technologically challenged users. Its simple and intuitive user interface was designed with and for Zimbabwean private schools and our own team of information analysts, some of whom bring in over 20 years of experience in educational data management and software development. Each user’s profile is unique and contains all information they need, but nothing else. There is a wide area of advanced features for selected users, but no cluttered menu structures nor options that are not relevant for everyone else. Keeping things simple.

License

Senatical is license-based. The license fee includes unlimited use of the software plus ongoing updates and full support. There are no added costs for data import and training at start-up, for backup services nor for the use of individual modules, only an ‘all-in’ license fee.

Personalised

For each school we implement their own individual student assessment reports, designed according to their unique school image and values. We set the system up to use the school’s own terminology for the names of key academic fields.

Customisations

Our ethos is that we listen to and implement the requirements of our schools. With our software being developed by our own team only, we have a strong cohesive foundation to build upon and virtually any type of customisation is possible. Options are near-limitless. Most requests can be placed within our regular development cycles and will become available free of charge. Additional data analyses, statistics, and special customisations can be developed at cost.

Integration

With full control and ownership of all components of the Senatical system, we can offer integration with third party software, as per your school’s requirements.

Browser-based

Senatical is browser-based. This means that it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, from any laptop, desktop computer, mobile phone or tablet with a Web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari). Nothing needs to be downloaded or installed on your device and it doesn’t matter what operating system you have. Simple.

Safe and Secure

Each user logs in with a unique Senatical username and password. A vast set of detailed roles and permissions focuses each user’s access to their unique content. Full access logging enables in depth security control. All connections are automatically encrypted via SSL to ensure your data is safe and secure whilst being transferred between your device and the Senatical server. Whether or not you choose to host your server at the school or on the Cloud, we always automatically back up all data daily to a separate remote backup server. This way we can have you up and running quickly and with minimal loss of data if something were to happen to your primary Senatical server.

The Server

When you log in to Senatical, your device connects with the Senatical server on which all data is securely stored. This server can be located within the school or our team can host it elsewhere (Cloud-based). If the server is located within the school, work will not be interrupted if the school’s Internet connection slows down or goes down. Having the server hosted on the Cloud can be more efficient, saving money on server purchase, installation, maintenance and SSL certificates.