What is leaflethub?
Accurate course information is crucial to numerous areas of college management. This is normally held within MIS from where the course file is developed to produce the full course provision. The main specific data held in MIS is the details of the course offering – times, days, costs, venues etc. This data is then used for a multitude of areas from staffing, facilities, timetabling, funding etc. For publishing purposes this is then connected to the descriptive data such as "Who is the course aimed at"
This information is either in-year or historic and there are a number of problems that arise when the output is required for marketing purposes. MIS is invariably under pressure and Marketing is only one area wanting work to be undertaken. MIS invariably supplies every course to everyone and is not selective. Each course has the same descriptor even if it is aimed at multiple audiences. International courses invariably carries the domestic cost even though it should be different. The Leaflet Hub allows Marketing to take control of the course leaflet information and all of these variations. Courses can be duplicated whilst carrying the same MIS code, different descriptors for the same course can appear linked to the same code to target the same course to different markets. New courses can be produced without an official course code using a temp code to be able to promote trial provision.
To setup the system requires an initial up-to-date course detail file, which is matched to the course descriptor either from MIS or any other database it is held on. The descriptor can be input directly into the fields if required and ongoing new courses are developed or changed this way. Now marketing has the required information it can control where this data goes and MIS can update as and when new courses are added or deleted without affecting ongoing provision.
The courses can now be sent to any websites that require them;
SFA
Hotcourses
UCAS
Or indeed any other sites including the colleges own website and digital magazine because built within this system is the ability to assign the right data to the fields required for each individual referral site.
The Leaflet Hub allows Marketing to be not just accountable for course information but also empowered to manage its content and context.