New and enhanced functionality across all solutions help K-12 school leaders prepare for a successful academic year
[Malvern, PA] (September 18, 2023) – Frontline Education, a leading provider of administration software purpose-built for educators in K-12, today released a comprehensive year-to-date innovation summary that underscores the company’s commitment to anticipating and meeting the evolving needs of school districts across the country. Investments made across its broad portfolio of connected solutions for human capital management, student and special programs, business operations and analytics support educators in streamlining administrative processes and optimizing district operations so school leaders can prioritize their time on delivering high-quality education.
“The technology needs of K-12 school leaders are at the core of our software and services strategy, which inspires us to always embrace an innovation-first mindset,” said Kevin Haugh, Chief Product Officer of Frontline. “As school leaders endure the busy back-to-school season, our aim through these new or enhanced capabilities is to assist districts in fulfilling their goal of achieving operational excellence. This summary highlights Frontline’s leadership in and dedication to providing cutting-edge tools and resources that empower educational institutions to succeed in an ever-changing landscape.”
Year-to-Date Product Highlights
Human Capital Management
Frontline’s Human Capital Management (HCM) solution plays a pivotal role in assisting school districts in the process of attracting, engaging, nurturing, and retaining personnel, all while enhancing the overall employee experience. The significance of HCM has grown into a strategic imperative for school districts, especially in the face of ongoing challenges related to shortages of both teaching and non-instructional staff. Several of Frontline’s HCM products were enhanced during the first half of the year.
- Frontline Recruiting and Hiring was significantly enhanced to streamline the process of hiring and onboarding. Users are now able to designate the hire of a substitute employee or contingent worker on the Hiring Initiation Page which then automatically flows into Frontline Central. The Hiring Initiation Page has also been expanded with options to add critical employment related data such as offer accepted date, start date and Staff ID which then translates into onboarding forms and packets. Additionally, increased configurability capabilities were added to improve staff member data management by providing administrative users options to customize their systems to align with an organization’s internal processes. These enhancements provide hiring managers and new staff members with a more accurate, effective and efficient hiring and onboarding experience.
- Frontline Human Capital Analytics, a recent addition to the HCM portfolio, added new data, analytics, and insights that provide quick views into key Absence, Recruiting and Hiring, Professional Learning Management and Central solution metrics, while providing more detail through drill-down capabilities. The user interface was updated to create a simplified navigation experience, as well as an updated home page with snapshot metrics and data, allowing users to reduce their time-to-insight.
- As transformative capabilities are added to HCM, Frontline continues to regularly deploy user interface upgrades to enhance the look and feel of the offering. The improvements increase page responsiveness and performance, provide a consistent user experience, and create a more seamless connection within the comprehensive HCM solution benefiting both administrative and general staff members. A proud winner of a SIIA CODiE Award for Best Emerging Technology for Administrators in 2023, Frontline’s HCM solution processed over 59M absences, managed over 9.6M job applications, and provided 1.6M individuals with access to professional development activities in the 2022 – 2023 school year. Frontline’s Mobile App, in particular, has supported better outcomes for districts by filling more than 5 million absences in the last school year. Additionally, over the past two back-to-school months, 418K jobs were filled via the Mobile App. By using the App, substitutes can conveniently accept positions within the palm of their hand, helping districts to reduce administrative time spent finding substitutes and maintain instructional time.
- Frontline’s Partnership Strategy has expanded to offer the K-12 community access to products and services that bring unique value to a district’s organizational goals operations.
- A deepened relationship with the Danielson Group, pioneers in advancing the principles of the Framework for Teaching, now provides Frontline the ability to offer Professional Growth clients the new 2022 Rubric and training content with assessments. Additionally, the existing 2011/2013 Danielson Rubric offered by Frontline has been updated to include the latest teaching courses and assessments.
- Formalized relationships with time clock providers, Touchpoint and Synel, enable K-12 users to choose the best, customized strategies for data collection and management of time and attendance, seamlessly integrated with Frontline’s market-leading Time solution. Touchpoint and Frontline already have an extensive joint customer base which will only be strengthened under this fortified partnership. Synel is also Frontline’s preferred vendor for ERP integrations.
- Frontline’s partnership with interviewstream, a leading video interviewing solution, now includes AI-generated support in building interview questions. The new feature helps to reduce the time it takes to create effective interview questions while ensuring the interview process remains fair and unbiased.
- The Frontline and Wagestream partnership which currently supports over 4,000 districts in providing early access to earned wages to substitutes has recently expanded. The financial well-being benefit is now available for districts to launch the flex-pay solution to all district employees. The offering is a solution for employees desiring access to their earned wages sooner than payroll cycles and also helps districts to attract and retain staff in today’s competitive market.
Student Management
Frontline’s student software supports school districts in managing student information, special populations and student health information leading to better student outcomes and accurate reporting that optimizes funding and increases the administrator’s impact on education. Innovation priorities for the first half of 2023 focused on increasing efficiency for staff.
- Frontline Special Programs Management development efforts focused on enhancements to both Frontline’s newest SPM offerings as well as existing Flagship solutions, all of which help to support district compliance requirements and enable a holistic approach to serving students. Frontline’s New Special Programs Management was enhanced with a Collaboration Portal providing much better visibility for the administrative staff to assess documents district-wide. Alerts and Express Actions Updates were added to support users in gaining efficiency in common tasks. Frontline has worked closely with its valued client partners to gather feedback on the new offering to continually increase its usability and efficiency. Frontline’s Flagship Special Programs Management solutions were enhanced to support overarching district compliance requirements. Capabilities such as transferring PDF files from one district to another, or the ability to filter, export, or archive necessary data were added to help users reduce administrative tasks while supporting regulatory needs.
- Frontline School Health Management continues to support a district’s health office and offers access to the most robust Electronic Health Records solution on the market. Examples of recent innovation include the creation of an annual health services report that provided a state in the South comprehensive data required for state annual reporting. Without the School Health Management- generated report, nurses would need to run individual reports manually and then cross-check data. Frontline also worked with a state in the Northeast to create a new monthly report used to obtain grant funding for school health services.
- Frontline Student Analytics enhancements include updates to the user interface allowing users to manage and retrieve notifications on data uploads for implementation. This provides users with a more efficient process and a better user experience. The design framework and navigation were also improved to create a seamless and unified experience across Frontline solutions.
Business
Frontline’s Business Operations Suite can support district administrators with everything from HR, Finance and Payroll to Inventory Management and Help Desk Ticketing. Enhancements to Frontline’s Business Suite in the first half of 2023 focused on enhanced efficiency for users.
- Frontline’s ERP system for California, known as Online 6—a completely web-based solution built for the unique needs of California school districts and County Offices of Education—has been continually modernized throughout the pilot phase. Recent releases include the ability to migrate data from the previous Online 5 version and import leave transactions including files from Frontline Absence Management. Enhancements were also made to improve the connectivity between ERP and Frontline Central including functionality to send cancelled and deleted assignments to Central as well as now allowing new employees to be created in either system which fosters a seamless data exchange. Frontline also continues to support mission-critical business processes and regulatory enhancements on ERP desktop (Online 5) ensuring users have what they need for timely reporting to the state of California.
- Frontline’s ERP system for Texas was modified to support new compliance requirements with state reporting and to reduce manual efforts for the districts. Examples include strengthening tooling and enablement compliance with Texas Education Agency requirements for Teacher Incentive Allotment designated teachers as well as enhanced reporting for the Teacher Retirement System, especially when it comes to substitute reporting. The system has also been upgraded for ad-hoc reporting and analytics to empower districts to understand data and leverage it for decision-making. Comprehensive tooling for payroll and finance, better recording of financial transactions, digitized invoices, and core technical improvements to the interface ensure improved system performance, enhanced security and a seamless user experience.
- Frontline Asset Management released a new capability -Parts Management- providing users with the ability to track parts down at the site level and will help to inventory the untagged parts needed for repairs. This feature is easy-to-use and provides consumable tracking.
- Frontline Help Desk released the ability for end users to close tickets directly from the user portal without needing assistance from a technician. This allows for users to self-help and for technicians and admins to be focused on bigger priorities.
- Frontline Business Analytics was enhanced to support users in filling out assumptions and projections, drilling down data into dashboards to get to greater insights faster, and with data visualization in PowerPoint templates. Frontline Comparative Analytics implemented a navigational design to simplify the user experience and enhance state-specific data visuals to satisfy requests from internal and external users. Frontline Location Analytics now allows district admins to apply re-districting scenarios more efficiently to quickly assess future capacities when changing boundaries, adding schools, closing schools or adding programs. No other tool used by districts has these efficiencies along with using current student data, which makes the student data more powerful to use and report on.
Frontline’s innovation will continue to build on momentum and focus efforts on new products and enhancements that help districts to optimize operational processes so they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on initiatives that support student outcomes. Learn more about Frontline Education and its portfolio here.
About Frontline Education
Frontline Education is a leading provider of school administration software, connecting solutions for student and special programs, business operations and human capital management with powerful analytics to empower educators. Frontline partners with school systems to deliver tools, data and insights that support greater efficiency and productivity, enabling school leaders to spend more time and resources executing strategies that drive educator effectiveness, student success and district excellence.
Frontline’s broad portfolio includes solutions for proactive recruiting and hiring, absence and time management, professional growth, student information systems, special education, special programs, Medicaid reimbursement, school health management, inventory control and asset management, payroll, benefits and financial management, and analytics solutions that help district leaders tap into their data to make more informed decisions for the benefit of their students and communities. Over 10,000 clients representing millions of educators, administrators and support personnel have partnered with Frontline Education in their efforts to develop the next generation of learners.