Live in four weeks, with your own data already in it
The reason institutions stay on software they dislike is the memory of the last migration. This page says exactly what the four weeks of moving to Ivake contain, who does what, and what the one-time onboarding fee buys.
The four weeks
What happens, week by week
Roughly four weeks for a school, six to eight for a university or a group with several campuses. The shape does not change, only how many times each step repeats.
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Week 1
Discovery
We sit with your admissions, academics and finance leads and write down how the institution actually runs: programmes, sections, fee heads, instalment plans, grading rules, approval chains. This is the week that decides whether the rest goes smoothly.
From you: two or three hours from each department head, and a copy of your current fee structure and academic calendar.
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Week 2–3
Migration and configuration
Your historical data is imported and reconciled: students, staff, past results, fee ledgers and outstanding balances. Programmes, roles and permissions are configured to match what we wrote down in week one. You get a staging environment with your own records in it, not a demo tenant.
From you: exports from your current system, in whatever shape they exist, and one person to answer questions about the odd ones.
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Week 3
Training, by role
Counsellors, class teachers, the exam cell, accounts and the front desk are each trained on their own screens, not on the whole system. Sessions are recorded, so the person who was on leave is not left behind and next year's new joiner has something to watch.
From you: ninety minutes per role, scheduled when those people are actually free.
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Week 4
Go-live
A final data refresh brings across anything that changed during training, then you switch. Your implementation manager is on call through the first week, and again through your first admission cycle and first examination, which is when the real questions arrive.
From you: a date. Ideally the start of a term or a counselling round, though it is not a requirement.
The part everyone fears
Your history comes with you, or we do not go live
Whatever shape it is in
Excel, Tally, a decade-old ERP with no export button, or a folder of scanned admission forms. We take what exists. Where a system has no export, we work from database dumps or screens. Nobody at your institution retypes a student.
Reconciled, not just loaded
After import, counts are compared line by line against your source: students per programme, fee collected per head, outstanding balances, results per semester. You sign off on that reconciliation before go-live. A number that does not match is found in week two, not in March.
The old system stays up
Run both in parallel for as long as you want to. Most institutions keep read-only access to the old system for a term. Nothing about the cut-over is irreversible on your side.
Duplicates surface, not merge
Two records for the same student, three spellings of a surname, a sibling entered twice. Near-matches are held for a human to decide rather than merged silently and discovered later by a parent.
The onboarding fee
What the ₹10,000 actually buys
Charged once, on your first invoice, and never again. It is not a percentage of anything and it does not scale with your size.
Included in it
- Discovery sessions with each department
- Migration of students, staff, results and fee ledgers
- Reconciliation you sign off before go-live
- Configuration of programmes, roles and approvals
- Role-by-role training, recorded
- A named implementation manager
Not charged separately
- Extra staff logins, however many
- Additional programmes or sections
- Parent and student app access
- Refresher training at each intake
- Support during admission and exam season
- Version upgrades
Quoted, if you want it
- On-site training across several campuses
- A custom integration with a system not on our list
- A private or dedicated deployment
- Reconstructing records from paper archives
Getting people to use it
Software gets abandoned when it adds typing
The risk in an ERP project is not the migration. It is the teacher who quietly goes back to a register in week three.
Trained on their own screen
A class teacher learns attendance and marks. They are not walked through the finance module. Ninety minutes, on the screens they will actually open.
Adoption is visible
During rollout we track logins and entries per role. A department that has quietly stopped using it shows up in week one, while it can still be fixed with a conversation.
Phones, not desktops
Attendance is marked from a phone at the front of the room in under a minute. If the daily task is faster than the paper it replaced, adoption looks after itself.
Questions
What principals ask before they commit
Can we go live mid-session?
Yes, and many institutions do. Mid-term is fine because attendance and marks carry a date; you start recording from the cut-over. The cleanest points are the start of a term or a counselling round, but waiting for one is rarely worth losing a season over.
What if our data is genuinely messy?
It usually is, and that is planned for. Messy data lengthens week two, not the project. What we will not do is load it silently and let you discover the problems later — anything ambiguous is surfaced for a human at your institution to decide.
Who do we actually deal with?
One named implementation manager from discovery through your first admission cycle and first examination. Not a ticket queue, and not a different person each week.
We are a group with several campuses. Is it still four weeks?
Six to eight is more realistic. The usual approach is one campus first, all the way to go-live, then the rest in parallel using the configuration the first one settled. The second campus is much faster than the first.
What if it does not work out?
You get a full export of every record and document in open formats, whenever you ask, including after the contract ends. Keeping your old system in parallel through the first term costs you nothing and means the decision stays reversible on your side.
Book a demo
See Ivake running on your own data
Send us a sample before the call: a term of enquiries, a fee structure, or a class list. We load it and set up your programmes, so you see your own institution on screen rather than a demo account.
- 45 minutes, your data. Not a generic tour of features.
- Migration mapped on the call. We show exactly where your current records land.
- A written rollout plan within two working days, with phases, owners and dates.
- No pressure to switch everything at once. Most schools and colleges start with one department or one intake.