Little Blossoms of Barrowford opened in September 2014 and is managed by Amy Greenall, a former primary school teacher. Amy and her team are able to care for up to 45 children, aged between three months and five years, from 7am – 7pm Monday to Friday.
As a brand new nursery, Little Blossoms of Barrowford were looking for a nursery management software programme which would grow with them as the nursery matured.
Amy’s previous experiences of nursery management software had not been positive, with one of her former employers using a system which did not allow for any flexibility or personalisation. This software also published very formal observations which were not what parents wanted so nursery staff ended up cutting and sticking the observations onto another sheet of paper – wasting time and money. Amy therefore had some very clear ideas about what she wanted her chosen nursery management software to offer to Little Blossoms, its staff and parents of the children in her care.
After meeting with the Connect Childcare team, Amy was impressed with the innovation and flexibility of iConnect.
iConnect is fantastic because it is flexible and can be personalised to exactly what we want it to do,said Amy
For example, we can add new tabs for children who are toilet training so that their parents know exactly how they are getting on with this challenge. The training we were offered by Connect Childcare was fantastic and personal, we know that we can just pick up the phone if we need help with anything and they will guide us through it, or we can use the Help Desk if we aren’t able to give them a call. iConnect is also cloud-based which means all of our data and observations are safe and can be accessed wherever we are. It also means we don’t risk losing pieces of paper in the busy nursery. We are based in a very old, former police station with very thick walls, but we have not had any issues with the software being cloud-based. Any wi-fi issues we have had were quickly resolved but the fact that you can use iConnect offline means it doesn’t matter if there is a problem with our internet connection. The online nature of iConnect means our staff are saving hours each week because records only need updating once.
"We absolutely love iConnect and so do the parents we work with," said Amy.
Parents especially love the Day in the Life reports because they include lots of pictures. Our staff love producing them too because they are so easy to prepare! This is definitely one of our nursery’s unique selling points. The ParentZone app is also helping dads to get more involved in their children’s development because it is easy for them to access on their phones or tablets wherever they are. It has really helped us to develop a partner relationship with the parents we work with.
One of the biggest bonuses of iConnect however, has to be the cost and time savings it offers. Our staff have saved countless hours by not cutting and sticking evidence into learning journals and we have estimated that we are saving up to £85 a month on printing daily sheets and colour photos.
I cannot thank Connect enough for helping us achieve this project.…
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