Perhaps what may be different about these times is that change is happening all around us through all levels of society and the various tiers of the public sector. We are all aware of the changes that began at Central Government level and then at Local Government level and now at School level.

The signs of the change are there; the localism agenda, the deficit reduction programme, the reduction in Devolved Forumla Capital, the delay in setting school budgets, the reports about moving to a more proactive preventative maintenance regime in schools.

So how is this going to affect the role of the School Business Manager? How is it going to affect the School Business Managers themselves?

In my view the SBM (I use SBM generically to refer to Finance Managers, Bursars, Office Managers, Administrators, etc) is probably the one of the most important roles in the school leadership and management team. More often than not they are responsible for ensuring the school complies with various health and safety regulations, responsible for managing projects, repairs, contract management, financial management as well as practically anything else that doesn’t neatly fit into the standard job descriptions. On top of this they may have a site supervisor or a site team to manage.

I guess, the pressure is on. The School Business Managers I’ve spoken with are highly motivated individuals and they’ll need to be that and more. They’ll have to be adaptable, flexible and clever in how they use their time and the resources available to them. They are going to have to free some mental time to think about the changes and how they are going to meet these challenges. They are also going to have to really evaluate the way they do things now and honestly assess if they can be doing things differently and more effectively. You’ll have heard the phrase, do more with less or maintain service levels with less.

This is where technology can help. I would confidently state that there aren’t many people who would do without their email in favour of sticky notes. How about your finance package? I bet you wouldn’t want to go back to the ledgers. Think of how much time you save or how much more you can get done with these useful technologies.

Every is one such useful technology. It will help you save a lot of time by bringing all your premises management tasks and issues into one neat place. It will give you reassurance that you it all in hand thereby freeing up your time for those other important activities. 

For this and more I invite you look around the website and book your interactive tour. In the words of one of our school business managers, it will be well worth that 15 minutes of your time.