Finally, a reporting tool for the education sector that’s useable straight out of the box! IRIS Central is your cloud-based reporting tool that brings together data from multiple sources and displays it in one, central place.
The next-level platform takes information from solutions like…
- Every HR
- Every Compliance
- MIS
- Finance and Budgeting (e.g. IRIS Financials)
…and transforms it onto dashboards that are easy to use and understand, supporting you to make speedier decisions that impact your school or MAT’s performance.
In 2023, 11% of MATs told us they have ‘no’ central reporting capability, with 67% saying they have ‘some’. The remaining 22% said that they have ‘loads’ – and we think it’s about time we got this figure to 100%!
Read on to learn all about how you can apply and benefit from the IRIS Central reporting tool within your organisation.
What can IRIS Central show?
Currently, a lot of reporting within schools and trusts focusses on students rather than staff, operations, or business management. But the data from behind-the-scenes can be hugely powerful in signposting where you can make improvements in your school or trust’s educational outcomes!
The main barrier to reporting usually starts with getting your hands on the data, and then knowing what to do with it. With IRIS Central, the heavy lifting is taken away! You can actually use data, rather than just collate it.
For schools, this means you’re able to combine data from your separate systems. The results? New insights that you’ve not been able to get your hands on before! For multi-academy trusts, IRIS Central brings together the data from the systems in your different schools for real-time overviews on things like staff absence levels. These school- and MAT-wide insights flag issues that need your attention and encourage more efficient ways of working across your organisation.
How does IRIS Central work?
The beauty of IRIS Central is that you can tweak it to support your school or MAT’s unique reporting means. So, you could have a dashboard that shows pupil attainment next to staff absence levels. That means you can spot any patterns or anomalies in the data and make appropriate interventions, like proactive conversations around staff attendance.
Or, if your trust has multiple vacancies in the run up to the summer holidays, you can take the salary information for live posts from Every HR and display this on your IRIS Central dashboard alongside budgeting data to keep forecasting in the green.
And it’s not just staff and student data that the reporting tool consolidates. IRIS Central integrates with Every Compliance, enabling you to customise dashboards and reports to show information like contract renewals and RAG ratings of all risk items by property, helping you prioritise maintenance and condition activities.
Why choose IRIS Central?
How many reporting solutions are ready to use from the get-go? Hint: not many! IRIS Central is the reporting tool that you can set up and use right away, straight from the box. There’s nothing else on the market that lets you consolidate reports quite like it!
So, what are the main benefits to your school or MAT?
1. Improve your management and retention of staff
IRIS Central integrates with Every HR, displaying end-to-end information from all elements of the HR cycle, from recruitment and training to performance, absence, and Payroll. This means you can:
- Track trends over time to make proactive interventions that improve your MAT’s people management
- View and adjust HR operations in real-time, like recruitment costs, to make the most informed spending decisions
2. Optimal use of time
Leave searching through multiple e-systems and spreadsheets for the data you need in the past! With IRIS Central, data for a range of functions is at your fingertips – fast. The tool consolidates the information you need and displays it on user-friendly dashboards that you can customise to suit your needs. Data becomes your friend, not your enemy!
3. More effective money management
Integrated to your budgeting and finance systems, IRIS Central gives you a better hold over your expenditure thanks to:
- Real-time analytics that show you the current cost of your curriculum, workforce, site maintenance, and more!
- The scenario modelling feature that gives you insight into the effect of a proposed action, so you can make adjustments to support future planning
4. Evidence performance relating to the DfE’s Trust Quality Descriptions
Next, for one of the real differentiators of IRIS Central: the access restriction that you customise and set for users. For instance, if trustees or executive leaders are after last term’s top-level financial data (which is now stored within Central).
The access restriction feature lets you choose the types of data different individual users or user groups can access, and the types of data that are restricted – in this case, individual pupil data. Here, trustees and executive leaders are still able to self-serve and get the data they need, all whilst adhering to good safeguarding practice. Plus, they can always keep on top of the live overview without having to wait for a data leader to run them a report or for the next trustees’ meeting!
5. Customised to your school or trust’s needs
No two trusts are the same – that’s why we don’t do ‘off the shelf’ when it comes to a centralised reporting tool. Whilst IRIS Central is ready to go out-of-the-box, it’s also ready to be moulded to suit your organisation’s unique requirements. Build dashboards about the activities and insights that matter to your school, trust, or MAT and see the benefit immediately!
Reporting’s just gone up a notch.
What could you achieve?
Speak with our team to get set up and started with IRIS Central!
