Introduction:
Datas are one of the most important informations in an industry, and whether a company have clear databases or not can be a strong influence factor of the success in the operation process. In this page, it will show that how can databases used in the decision-making sections of after-school training institutions, and how the datas helped for scaling up and operation.
Background:
Nowadays, after-school training institutions are showing an increasing trend between students in China, especially for those who want to spend their undergraduate or master life overseas.
Opportunities for the companies:
Due to the differentiations in the admission criteria and standardised tests of different countries and different schools, the subjects needed by the students are also more diversified than before. This provides a large amount of commercial opportunities to the training institutions. One of the tendencies is that the companies wants to set up more kinds of courses to meet the demands of the students.
Here, datas can help like this.
First design an online questionnaire to ask the demands of the students. This questionnaire can be both handed out among the students the institutions have presently and the students in the nearby schools or universities(colleges).
Secondly, the background data system can give the result of the distribution of the answers.
Thus the institution should first start construct the teaching program of SAT2 and maybe then A-Level.
Another example is aiming the client group.
Commercial situation:
A manager of one of the institution conscious that study abroad agencies and the consulting companies have a broad market prospect. Thus, a plan of cooperate with an agency had been come up with by him. As it is a brand new field they involved themselves in, so the institution decided to hand out some online advertisements to the students to promote the new service.
The role of databases:
Help them to know who are their target customers.
How to achieve:
First, give each student a unique id number at the first time they sign on, and record every single course they had enrolled.
Under this circumstance, by typing in the student id number,
all the courses they had participated in can be presented out like this.
Therefore it can be figured out that, for example, those who learned both SAT(Scholastic Assessment Test, college entrance exam in America) and TOEFL(Test of English as a Foreign Language, an English proficiency test) are the primary targets of the advertisement, because this combination of courses had shown a strong possibility that the student is preparing for study in the United States now.
Same things happened on those who studied IELTS(The International English Language Testing System, an English proficiency test) and DALF(Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française, a French proficiency test) at the same time, this kind of students are very likely to need the help of the study overseas agency, because from their course lists it can be referred that a large proportion of them will apply for the universities in France or the programs being taught in French, which means some of them will need professional guidance when they are applying.
On the contrary, for those who are now sitting in the English course for college entrance exam of China at the moment, since there is no strong relevant between their choice and study abroad, which means they could be the potential customers in the future but won’t be the target consumers at present.
Other possible use of the databases system:
One of the most possible applies of this system is to push the content that the customer may needs or be interested in. For instance, the marketing department can send advertisements about TOEFL courses to those who only sit in SAT at present, vice versa. “according to your mates, majority of them who choose one of the two courses will soon choose the other one for sure.” Also for the students who are now studying English for Year 8 in China, “we had noticed that you had chosen the course for year 8, so Maths for Year 8 in China may suits you as well.”
Just as what we received from shopping websites in daily life, and think about yourself - when you received those informations, you are likely to have more willing to pay for them. By doing so, the customer stickiness and loyalty can be improved and the company will gain the same amount of profits in a shorter time than without using the databases, and that’s what we called efficiency.