Education world now putting more focus on planning

A 32% increase in downloads in the last four weeks is a tangible indicator that planning is back at the top of the agenda according to Plandisc, the world’s first digital, shareable and interactive circular planning tool.  Usage from clients in the education sector has soared a staggering 50% in the “back to school” season. With 60,000 customers across twenty countries, Plandisc originated as a planning tool for schools and it is the education world from primary schools through to colleges and further and higher education bodies which remains by far its biggest fan base.

Plandisc originated in Denmark where the expression “year wheel” is much used.  Ideal for visualising organisational flow and generating transparency to break down departmental siloes that can hinder progress, year wheels make it easy to involve multiple groups and stakeholders. At its simplest, having the overview ensures that classes, timetables and event schedules do not clash and for education establishments wanting to function at the highest possible professional level, the evaluation module ensures that mistakes do not reoccur.

It saves time for the school as a whole and Plandisc customer feedback shows that administration time is reduced by about 2 hours per teacher or academic member of staff (per annum). “Plandisc is ideal for starting to (re-) plan activities/tasks/meetings in a still semi-virtual world. The need for coordination and visualization and mapping of elements across a school or educational establishment is going to be huge to avoid overlapping activities and stressing the organisation unnecessarily” explains Torben Stigaard.

Plandisc is compatible with Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint and the synchronisation between Outlook and Plandisc means that important meetings and events can be transferred across in a few clicks, so no “copy and pasting” required with changes appearing both in Outlook and the Plandisc at the same time.  Typically embedded on an organisation’s intranet to make it accessible to all staff, the circular overview helps coordinate plans between academic departments as well as sports, events and marketing activity.  With a circular view, it is easy to spot overlapping activities and make sure that staff meetings, parent days and virtual open days for example are distributed evenly throughout the year. As Stigaard explains “Sharing information via Plandisc in business as usual times avoids last-minute changes of plans and extra workload but now, with so much activity that was paused during lockdown needing to restart, there is even more need for better planning as an educational establishment cannot suddenly implement all paused activity at the same time whilst still having the flexibility update plans easily and efficiently as circumstances change.”

Outside the education world, Plandisc is used by all kinds of organisations and it now has over 60,000 users in twenty countries and twenty sectors from churches in the US to fashion companies in the Nordics and multi-nationals.