Technology and transparency deliver growth for Green Point Christian College

Since 1982, Green Point Christian College has delivered quality K-12 education to the Central Coast of NSW. The College has always been committed to providing top-tier education while fostering a strong sense of community, and has thrived in recent years, growing to over 1150 students. An important part of this growth has been ensuring that parents have a seamless and transparent enrolment experience, backed by efficient internal processes.

The collaboration between two platforms – Digistorm Funnel, a robust enrolment management system, and the Feesable School Fee Calculator – revolutionised the College’s approach to enrolment, communication, and growth management. With Funnel and Feesable combined, Green Point Christian College has seen benefits for both their prospective families and internal teams.

As with many schools, the College relied on paper based and manual processes, but with growth on the horizon, the team understood the need to create efficiencies to enable this growth. “Historically, our enrolment tracking process was very manual”, explains Michael Lowebridge, Business Manager at Green Point Christian College. He continues, “There were a lot of paper-based processes, phone calls and face-to-face meetings. Very hard to search, very hard to keep track of.”

Before Feesable, the College also had a more complex fee structure, as Michael explains, “…we had one set fee plus levies for different products, for different services or different electives, and then the optional services on top of that.”

This complexity made it difficult for parents, especially with they had to work out the fees themselves using the hardcopy PDF fee schedule. Assistant Business Manager & Marketing Manager, Brendan Wood says, “We used to get those phone calls through to our registrar or our finance team, then manually work them out from our fee prospectus, and then email that or phone that information back (to the parents).”

Coming from an I.T. background, Michael was particularly interested in eliminating paper and manual processes where possible. Enter Funnel and Feesable.

Implementing Digistorm’s Funnel allowed Green Point Christian College to make the much-needed transition from manual processes to a digital platform. For Michael, Funnel offered what the College needed to help streamline the enrolment process. “We started looking for a digital platform to engage our enrolment process,” explains Michael. “My go-to was Digistorm, and I chose not to go anywhere else at that point because I looked at the product and thought, ‘This is going to be good for what we need’.”

“Starting with Feesable was really about improving that customer experience for our parents,” says Brendan. He continues “We were trying to be as transparent as possible, making sure the parents are really informed about what the fees will be.”

Reflecting on the benefits of Feesable for the school community Michael comments, “It provides access to our parents. Giving them the ability to have those questions answered before they come to speak with us is significant. So effectively we’ve been transparent.”

The introduction of Feesable prompted the College to rethink their fee structure. “We’ve now got one set fee, which essentially covers all components of the educational product that we offer here.” explains Michael. “We have a relationship with parents that should transcend other matters. We partner with parents to educate their children. That includes transparency around what we offer as an educational product, and how we charge for that product. We want the parents to understand what it costs to educate their children at our school, and we want that to be upfront. No hiding things, so there’s no surprises.”

Implementing both Funnel and Feesable was about making the experience for parents the best it could be, while internally, it was the integration between the two platforms that really streamlined their processes.

“It provides us with efficiency”, explains Michael. “Our registrar used to field phone calls trying to interpret our previous fee sheet.”

For Angela Sheather, Registrar at Green Point Christian College, the benefits of Feesable have been significant. “Feesable is a really useful tool, not just for us, but also prospective families,” shares Angela. “It’s meant that we no longer have to make as many phone calls or send emails. I’m able to direct prospective families to the fee calculator rather than personally working out fees myself. Families have told me they appreciate being able to use Feesable. That means when they come to us, they already know that it will work for them.”

According to Brendan, the team is in agreement that they wouldn’t want to operate any other way. “Since the integration of Feesable into Funnel, we no longer have to look out for notification emails. We can just go into Funnel, bring up our list of Feesable enquiries, and look through that list. We go to Funnel for all of that information now, rather than juggling two systems,” states Brendan.

Feesable has also allowed the team to refine enquiries and use the data to follow up specific families that match enrolment gaps. Brendan explains, “It also really benefited us because we could see what years that people were enquiring about, and it gave us a resource really to work with parents and invite them along to open days, tours, and encourage them to enrol because we actually had a place available for their student.”

The adoption of Funnel and Feesable has brought about a paradigm shift in how Green Point Christian College operates. “It has been a real game changer, for many reasons, having both of those processes digitised. For parents, but also for our team…we just couldn’t look back now and think that we could operate any other way.”, Brendan emphasises.

“We’ve seen growth in the school since adopting Feesable and Funnel at the end of 2019. We’ve grown from 950 students in early 2020, now to around 1,150 students, and next year, we anticipate beginning with almost 1,200 students. It’s really those platforms that have helped us manage that growth during those few years to bring us to where we are now. We are just so thankful that we had Funnel and Feesable available online for parents to access.”

The success story of Green Point Christian College proves that seamless integration between technology solutions can drive growth, enhance efficiency, and improve the overall experience for schools, and families.