A powerful system leveraged across North America by school districts for planning and long-term projections

The custom, desktop-based application is an analytic tool for performing interactive enrolment projections to facilitate analysis of future staffing and capital requirements.

Client Name

Baragar Systems

Application

Services

  • Project Management
  • Business Analysis
  • Data Migration
  • Custom Desktop Development
  • Integration

Technologies

  • Visual Basic
  • MS SQL Server
  • Access & Excel
  • Crystal Reports

Client Needs

Previously, enrolment projections systems were mainframe based and produced reams of paper reports. Analysts used these reports to produce manual projections in an onerous and time consuming process. Baragar wanted to develop an interactive desktop program that would allow individual planners to customize projection parameters and perform real time analysis on 1, 2, 5, 10 and 15 year enrolment projections. These projections would facilitate analysis of future staffing and capital requirements in school districts across Canada and the USA.

Our Solutions

Custom Desktop Application

Demographic Dynamics (DemoDyna) was the first desktop based analytic product that Bayleaf developed for Baragar and it has been under continual development and enhancement for over 20 years. It currently has ~200 forms ,150 code files and a code base with over 600k lines of code. It connects to databases in MS SQL and MS Access formats and uses XML and MS Excel formats for data imports and exports. Additionally, it supports data exchanges with other Baragar applications via Baragar’s secure web services layer.

DemoDyna allows a user to select from a number of a number of different projection methodologies to produce 1, 5, 10 & 15 year student enrolment projections by school. These projections are further broken down by grades, programs and geographic factors.

Enrolment projections are based on a number of demographic factors and DemoDyna allows these to be isolated and projected and analyzed separately (i.e. migration, participation, births). It presents historic data on births and population and trends for variables which are key for accurate enrolment projections such as: separating magnet programs from regular programs and separating in-boundary from out-of-boundary students.

Integration

The tool uses advanced heuristic algorithms to produce default initial projections and then provides analytic tools to facilitate the user refining those default projections. It supports different projection methodologies based on population types and allows these various projections to be rolled up prepare a comprehensive outlook for each school and the district as a whole. Finally it allows for comparing past projections against historical actuals for fine tuning of future projection parameters.
DemoDyna provides customizable graphing and reporting features. It also has rich exporting tools and key integration APIs allowing users to assess the impact of projections in tools like Baragar’s Staff Allocator staffing assessment tool.