Who's Next? - Overview

Who's Next? is an easy-to-use management system designed to record student visits in counseling and advising centers. With a few mouse clicks, counselors and advisors can record 1) every student they advise, 2) how much time they spent with a student, and 3) every advisement service they gave to a student.

History

Back in the fall of 2001, a community college in San Antonio, TX approached us and asked if we could develop a software application that would track the students they advise on a daily basis. The requirements for this application were simple:
    1) Show all counselors logged into the system.
    2) Show all students waiting to see a counselor.
    3) Be able to track advisement services easily.

In the spring of 2002, after working on the application for several months, we deployed the system to a department that had about 5 full-time counselors. The software worked so well for this department, that it was later deployed to all 8 departments within the school's Counseling Center and later to 2 other campuses within the district.

It was at this time that we decided to re-write the application, add a lot of different features and functionality, and started selling the application to colleges and universities across the nation.

Why our software called "Who's Next?"

Before we deployed our software to the various departments within the Counseling Center, we decided to visit each department to analyze their work flow. At that time, each student would sign in on a clipboard at the front desk and then wait in the lobby. When a counselor was ready to see a student, the counselor would walk to the front desk, pick up the clipboard and would say "who's next?"

Instead of signing in with pen and paper, everything is now done electronically. Counselors and staff automatically know which student is next to be seen, who they want to speak with, and their reason for visiting the department.