k6 - Interview with Thierry Fernandez, school director

Streamlining School Management with Komit

In this blog post, we would like to share a success story of the collaboration between Komit and Boule et Billes within the past few years. Together, we implemented and developed both Komit’s k6 and k7 to support the school's growing needs to manage their appointments, registrations, students, activities, transports, attendance, and much more thanks to all the features available in a usual ERP (accounting, purchase, stock...). This post will mainly focus on our story with Thierry, who manages the school’s operations on k6 and the inspirations behind using k6



About Boule et Billes school

Boule et Billes Logo

Founded in 2004, Boule et Billes, a French school accredited by the French Ministry of Education, fosters multilingual learning in Ho Chi Minh City. Partnered with the Agency for French Education Abroad, they go beyond textbooks, offering a trilingual program in English, French, and Vietnamese. Their learning journey extends beyond the classroom.  Consistent extracurricular activities and events cultivating a dynamic learning experience, sparking 

intellectual curiosity and igniting a lifelong passion for learning.

https://bouleetbilles.net

Why did you approach Komit?

As the school grew, we realized that the old process to track the administrative tasks had to be modernized because Excel has made it difficult to track the increasing number of students and paperwork. At the time, I was looking for a solution and felt trust to partner with Komit as I was a friend for years with the founder, Jean-Charles DRUBAY. I decided to start working with him and build a solution suitable for the school’s needs. It turns out to be a wonderful success. 


Thierry and JC at Boule et Billes


Now, we have automated all our administrative processes, and we have future plans to make our operation even more online and centralized. This would help immensely when I need to manage things remotely and make our school operations’ much more flexible. I will then be able to focus more on education and less on administration.


Boule et Billes - k6 helps focus on education


Which features help you the most to save time and avoid mistakes? 

I’d have to go with automated invoicing tracking. The automated invoicing process has been fantastic starting from the self-subscription by the parents in the portal of k6 and automatically generating all the invoices with the correct prices taking into account all pricing criteria automatically. This helps to minimize errors, and we still have the flexibility to easily do manual adjustments from the automatically generated invoices to handle special situations.


Today, the school doesn't need any more to key in data as the information submitted by the parents will automatically be saved in k6 database. This not only saves time but also minimizes the chance of mistakes that can happen with manual entry.


 Classroom at Boule et Billes

How did your team welcome the projects?

We initially faced some challenges when having to adapt to a new way of working, but that was to be expected. Komit has been listening to our requests and feedback to always support us and try to adapt the software to reduce the difficulties to switch to the new working method. As a result, the team overcame that hurdle and now finds using k6 a normal part of their routine. Today, the team would not imagine working without k6 anymore.


Another big challenge was the timing when launching features. I would recommend starting to use k6 one feature at a time. For each feature, it helps to ensure that the feature is 100% ready with our process thanks to testing, configuration, training, further adjustments that Komit could implement, or even a review of our internal processes. The ideal situation is to start using a new feature when preparing a new school year. Alternatively, it is often possible to start using a new feature at the beginning of any term. We had to anticipate by learning and testing the features long before starting to use it.


Boule et Billes staff


Training newcomers today seems complex because they are introduced to many features right away. However, the Komit team has published user guides to help.


Before using k6, training newcomers seemed simpler but took much longer. This often led to inconsistent methods for handling tasks as people had to do things before they even knew a process existed. With k6, many processes no longer need to be learned by anyone because k6 handles them for us automatically, and automatic checks prevent us from making mistakes.

If you had to go through the setup process again, would you do something differently?

Looking back, launching k6 during a global pandemic wasn't ideal. The constant price fluctuations, the daily invoicing adjustments and additional administrative workload was quite challenging. However, the overall step-by-step approach was a smart move. Taking the time to adapt internal processes and perfect the k6 application ensured everyone felt comfortable using it.

How do you feel about the Quality of the support from Komit?

I've been impressed with Komit's support team. They're readily available and friendly, and for the most part, they're able to address my questions quickly and efficiently. When it comes to new or complex requirements, there can sometimes be a gap in understanding due to differences in terminology or how we communicate. However, I've found the Komit team to be very open to collaboration. By working together and clarifying our needs, we're able to reach a solution quite effectively. Also, escalation was possible to access the most senior experts of Komit's team.


What makes me the most happy about Komit is that they are very receptive to our requests for improvements and new features. While I know this can create challenges for our own team, particularly regarding training and adapting our process, we appreciate Komit's willingness to develop new features based on our feedback. This is a key factor in our satisfaction with their service.


Teacher and student at Boule et Billes

What would you like Komit to focus on?

I would recommend to focus on the stability and tuning of existing features.


First, it would be great to dedicate some time to reviewing past reported issues. This would involve checking with the team to confirm that past issues have been resolved or still ongoing. With that, I would use the remaining hours to refine existing features and ensure they run smoothly.  This might involve making minor adjustments or optimizations to improve overall functionality. 


Looking ahead, we want to start using some available features that we did not have time yet to start using, such as the registration of new students by parents. However, successful implementation relies on both the school and parents being comfortable with this shift. The more features we use and the more stable k6 becomes, the more opportunities we see for automation in the future.


Also, we will need to work with Komit’s team to train us on the accounting features, which I saw have great potential in demos. I’m looking forward to the day when the P&L of the schools and other business reports automatically arrive in my email inbox weekly with real-time numbers, without any extra effort from my accounting team.

Could you imagine stopping using k6?

Absolutely no way could we imagine stopping using k6!  When we started this project, our goal was to move away from Excel spreadsheets and modernize our entire process. Five years later, k6 has become an essential part of our school's daily operations. 

What are the strengths of Komit that make this project a success?

The biggest strengths that Komit brings to the table are their team's availability and commitment. They're always here to support us and constantly work on improving the system. This ongoing collaboration and dedication are what really makes this project a success.


By the way, if you are looking for a school for your kids, you can book an appointment with us here: 


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