Background and Challenges
A children’s arts-education chain in South China runs dance, art and instrument programs across 12 campuses with roughly 6,000 enrolled students. Scheduling was done campus by campus in Excel, class-hour packages lived on paper receipts and spreadsheets, and payment data was scattered across three systems: a POS SaaS, a mini-program and accounting software. The numbers rarely agreed. When a parent asked how many sessions were left, the front desk would dig through sheets for several minutes; students approaching the end of a package went unnoticed, and renewal reminders depended entirely on each teacher’s memory.
Our Approach
We designed and built a custom operations platform: a web admin console for headquarters and campuses, plus a WeChat mini-program for parents. Four core capabilities: conflict-checked scheduling across teachers, rooms and time slots, with bulk rescheduling for holidays; class-hour package management covering purchase, deduction, leave and make-up lessons; automatic reconciliation of payments against hours consumed, with revenue visible to headquarters in real time; and automatic reminders that push low-balance and expiring notices to parents through the mini-program.
Rollout proceeded campus by campus in two-week batches. We migrated historical hour records with the client’s team, so enrolled students needed no re-registration.
Results
- Scheduling time dropped by about 60% versus manual spreadsheets, with double-bookings basically eliminated (sample data, to be verified);
- Class hours and payments reconcile automatically — no more digging through sheets at the front desk (sample data, to be verified);
- Expiring students are reminded through the mini-program, reaching 100% of due renewals (sample data, to be verified);
- One system now runs all 12 campuses, with headquarters tracking hours consumed and revenue per campus in real time.