Foreign Perspectives

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Sometimes the upgrades that appear the most complicated turn out to be the simplest in the end and so it was with an upgrade to our listings sites which I’ve been putting off for ages.

What it does is to allow the properties listed to specify exactly which facilities that they offer from air conditioning to swimming pools.

At first glance it looked like it would be quite difficult to do but that first glance was clouded by having seen how other accommodation listing places do it. Every single one seemed to go out of their way to make it complicated by adding tickboxes and dropdowns at every turn and even then they don’t always get it right. For example, one place we’re listed with let’s you say that you take pets but if you say that you don’t then it doesn’t say anything at all about it on the website.

In fact, many of the options are like that. It’s often the case as with the pets that you would want to explicitly say that you don’t take them but, for marketing reasons, most hotel listings sites only list positive options so, for example, they’ll say that you have a swimming pool but won’t say anything if you don’t. That’s fine for the swimming pool option but not so for the pets one where you need the negative stagement to be displayed.

Anyway, with that in mind my implementation gives the owners the choice about including the negative information where appropriate.

Next up is the search facility for that but fortunately that looks like it will be relatively easy to do and in any case the existing search function will also work on the facilities list albeit taking a few days for google to pick up the new content if you change something.

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Hooker furniture may have been around for quite a long time but they move with the times as you can see from this very elegant entertainment centre: very much up to date in terms of all the gadgets that it can incorporate yet at the same time preserving the elegance of yesteryear.

I’m sure that you’ll realise that Hooker furniture is far from cheap but, of course, you generally get what you pay for and these are very good quality items indeed which’ll see out all the hi-tech goodies that you install in them. That said, you can get discounts on the pieces by buying online and when you’re talking about items as expensive as these those discounts can amount to quite a sizeable chunk of cash.

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School administration used to be a fairly simple affair but it has become more and more complex over the years with additional tasks added tacked on as time as gone on.

Many of these additional tasks fall under the remit of management of the school rather than the educational side of things which has traditionally been where school principals have come from and schools are pretty complex beasts to manage as well. It’s therefore becoming more and more necessary to call into play software that can keep a handle on what’s going on.

For example, the organisation of school trips used to be quite straightforward but these days they’re logistical nightmares involving negotiations with overseas accommodation, transport and entertainment. All that before you even consider the business of keeping track of who is actually going on the trip!

Fees are more and more common of course too and with fees comes the need to draw on marketing resources which in turn leads you down the path of contact management and following up of leads. Naturally these days that may entail e-mail marketing programmes in addition to the calling of bygone days.

Management and allocation of resources from teachers to classrooms, transport, etc. is of course still part of the normal school activity but no less easy to do simply because it’s better known by those involved in it. And, of course, you need to keep track of how everyone is doing so that the various performance statistics demanded by the educational authorities can be presented in the appropriate format.

However, with all those complications it’s perhaps surprising to know that there aren’t a lot of integrated school management systems around. One of those that seems to be doing quite well internationally is TEAMS which is produced by a relatively small Australian company.

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