Transforming Education Sector: How My Contributions Streamlined Student Information Management for Millions with Ease
The Vision:
Imagine an enterprise platform that seamlessly manages every aspect of student information from application to graduation with stunning user experience, powerful batch processes to operate on thousands of records in minutes with built-in rich reporting and analytics, delivered plug-and-play system integrations, and ground-up support for customizations and extensibility. This is Campus on Cloud, a SaaS ERP solution built on MS Azure, designed to streamline Student Information Management. With purpose-built modules for tracking admissions, financials, and academic information, it empowered educational institutions to maintain millions of records in a unified contemporary system.
My Role:
When I joined the Campus on Cloud team, the startup had only been 8 months into existence; we had a small team but a big vision and hundreds of user stories to define. From the start, I was involved in every aspect of the product’s evolution which continued for 8 years of my involvement with the team. I stepped in to create user stories, prioritize features, and end-to-end B2B product management including maintaining product roadmaps and ensuring our strategies aligned with business goals.
Building the Product:
Campus on Cloud is a complex platform, demanding the development of intricate features such as interactive screens, batch processes, integrations, and analytics. Daily brainstorming sessions focused on enhancing features based on market demands and user needs. We meticulously crafted development-ready user stories, iterating through various options, designing paper mockups, conducting whiteboarding sessions, and simulating user stories on Google Sheets. We also designed enterprise data models and wrote intensive pseudo-algorithms for complex business cases.
Following agile methodologies and the SCRUM framework, I facilitated efficient sprint planning and backlog grooming while supervising development teams to ensure clarity and context for each user story. Over time, my deepening expertise in the ed-tech and fin-tech domains significantly enhanced my ability to manage the product and define features effectively.
Championing User Experience:
The foremost priority of our ERP was to deliver an impeccable user experience with a modern touch, transforming the traditionally mundane task of managing an enterprise system into a delightful journey. As a product manager, I passionately championed user-centric design to ensure intuitive and enjoyable interactions. By staying ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies, I diligently collaborated with the UX team to guarantee top-notch proposals from a user experience perspective. We conducted several iterations before finalizing the production version, ensuring every detail was perfect.
Delivering the ERP Implementations:
As a product expert, I was the first team member to travel abroad for a requirement-gathering session at a sports institute in South Africa, a client that had just signed up for our ERP. This implementation was particularly challenging as our product was primarily designed for the STEM higher education sector. Despite this, through extensive analysis and brainstorming, I proposed the optimal configuration design for the institute's needs and led the definition of several customized features. This included a revised admissions module to support their 365-day rolling admissions process. I successfully delivered the product along with the custom features, and the client was ecstatic with our efforts. This implementation has provided recurring revenue to date.
Over the next few years, I led several flagship projects for our product’s rollout, including a chain of private institutes with 12+ subsidiaries in South Africa and the largest private university in Malaysia. Each project presented increased complexity and scale, but I navigated through these challenges with success. The implementation at the Malaysian university especially presented significant challenges due to its extensive scope and well-established existing business processes/workflows. However, through meticulous planning, dedication, hard work, and maintaining close communication with end users in an agile manner, we successfully designed and delivered the solution.
As I gained deeper product expertise, my role evolved into that of an Enterprise Solution Architect. In this capacity, I provided expert guidance to over 20+ implementation teams, ensuring our architectural and configuration designs met enterprise standards and strategic goals. My focus remained on creating sophisticated solutions that streamlined processes, met users' detailed needs, and adhered to industry best practices.
Leading the Team:
As the team expanded, leading a cross-functional team became essential. I collaborated with engineering, QA, design, implementation, sales, marketing and business teams to deliver high-quality outcomes. Additionally, I mentored over 100 team members, including junior product managers, sharing my expertise and guiding them in their career development.
The Contribution Summary:
Feature Enrichment: Achieved 20x feature enrichment, 8x client growth, and a 20x increase in user numbers.
Enterprise-Level Delivery: Delivered 500+ enterprise-level features, including forms, batch processes, integrations, reports, and dashboards with rich configurability.
International Expansion: Led the first international rollout, securing recurring annual revenue for the past seven years.
Cross-Functional Leadership: Guided a cross-functional team of up to 40+ including developers, QA, business analysts, application consultants, and UX designers through 15+ major and 20+ minor releases.
Institutional Impact: Assisted 30+ higher education institutions in processing 100k+ online applications and managing the academic and financial data of 50k+ students.
Team Mentorship: Mentored and Coached the team including product managers and business analysts,
My journey with Campus on Cloud as a Product Leader exemplifies the transformative impact of vision, leadership, and innovation. Together, we revolutionized student information management, establishing a new benchmark for SaaS ERP solutions in education. This experience has not only honed my skills but also equipped me to tackle future challenges with greater expertise and confidence. The complexities we navigated daily have strengthened my capabilities, setting the stage for even greater achievements ahead!
Driving Innovation and Efficiency in EdTech: Insights from a Senior Product Manager's Journey
Written by Salman Taha, 23 July , 2024 | Reading Time: 6+ mins