Our goal: make you, the schedule maker, look awesome

On our marketing site, we cite our three goals in a very succinct way. And I quote:

  1. To make schedules that took into account when professors wanted to teach.
  2. To make schedules that protected course diversity for students, that is, not scheduling all the, say, tax courses at the same time.
  3. To make the process of creating a schedule easy enough that any administrator, dean, faculty member, or staffer could oversee the process.

End quote. The above is true, and I'd never waver or hedge from those points, BUT we have another less public objective that sits over our entire operation. And, it is this fourth governing principle that is, in my opinion, what has truly made our work resonate with our clients. It is this:

Our goal is to make you look awesome.

The YOU here is the individual or team charged with making your school's schedule. The LOOK AWESOME part is giving you the tools you need to look infinitely competent, able, on it, organized, and in full command of the scheduling process. You could say we want to make you look good, but that is not strong enough because our aim is not to have people watch you work and be impressed. Our goal is to have people watch you work and be amazed.

And let's be clear. We're in the background. You're in the forefront. The way we have developed this, it is going to look like your office built this solution in-house, including carrying your logo and not ours. All the communications will come with your name on it.

Now here's one of the many bonuses that come with the system. If you're a professional school, from start to finish, it takes in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 hours to make a schedule. With the ofCourse system, it's going to take you between 10-20 hours (and the end schedule is going to be WAY better), but no one other than you and I needs to know the timing of this. When people walk into your office during the scheduling season, and they ask how it's going, you can still pat your brow or sigh audibly and talk about the rigor of it all. Why? Because they don't know you've just saved yourself 120 hours of time (or three full weeks!!! if you prefer). And they don't see that you're not working on the schedule right now, but you are instead getting a jump-start on the next project that is due after you finish the schedule. No one has to know that not only do you no longer dread making the schedule but that you kinda like spinning the dials and throwing the levers and reviewing the real-time reports and sharing your end bit of wizardry with the world. No one has to know any of those things.

But what you do with the three weeks of time you get back is up to you. As stated at the start, our goal is to make you look infinitely competent, able, on it, organized, and in full command of the process. What you do with that freedom is of course up to you.

As always, see you on the scheduling pitch.

Troy.

Troy Dearmitt

Troy is the CTO & Co-founder at ofCourse.

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