Holross Systems and Schoolworx

  • 19 November 2018

Holross Systems was formed in June 2009. A proudly Australian-owned company that designs, builds and maintains software for school systems.  All work is performed by Australian designers and programmers in partnership with our client school systems.

History of our software

The first product, named IRIS, was released by the company in 2009.  It is a school-based web application focused on providing support for welfare, attendance and academic reporting for high schools. It is still in use today by a number of government and private high schools.

IRIS Marks was released in 2011 as an advanced mark book system to meet the growing demands for better management of academic results.  With its easy-to-use interface, underpinned by a powerful calculating engine, it is still today unrivalled in performance.

Current products

Schoolworx was launched early in 2013 as a fully integrated system for K-12 school systems with high performance multi-homing integrated into its core structure.  This application incorporated the key modules of IRIS and added in the necessary structures for enterprise scalability, allowing it to be accessed by hundreds of schools using the one installation.

Later that year, the Parent/Teacher Interview Bookings was added to Schoolworx.  This module was designed to allow parents to make interview bookings online through the portals and have them confirmed immediately.  It has proved to significantly reduce the amount of time needed by schools to set up and manage their Parent/Teacher evenings.

PS Reports was added in 2016 responding to demands by primary schools to provide a fully functioning mark book system incorporating MS Word templates to publish results in well formatted reports.  This product is somewhat unique amongst primary school reporting systems whereby both results management and presentation are encapsulated into the one web application.

In 2018, Schoolworx Analytics, a business intelligence (BI) module, was added to the product mix to expand support for school systems to oversee trends and patterns happening across their schools.  These BI reports can be built by system managers and IT personnel using data available from the supporting data warehouse.

Into the future

The Managing Director of Holross Systems, John Hol states:

"The company is in a sound financial position to expand into the future.  The projections for growth in the next few years are very positive. As the NSW LMBR project rollout is nearing completion, it has become quite clear that there is an opportunity for Schoolworx to fill the void that has been created with short comings in the delivered product.  Other states too, are reviewing their systems and re-evaluating their requirements against the changing modern educational environment."

John Ross, who is the Design Manager for Schoolworx and a director of Holross Systems, expresses his excitement about the future of Schoolworx:

"Product development is an ongoing focus of the company, adjusting to the demands of ever-changing educational requirements.  I continue to be amazed just how much has changed in education in the past few years. We reiterate our continuing commitment to working closely with our clients and their schools.  Schoolworx has been designed to meet those challenges and will continue to be our focus for the foreseeable future."

Exciting times indeed !