DreamClass is a modern, all-in-one school management system that simplifies admissions, grading, attendance, and tuition payments in a fully paperless platform. Designed for schools of any size, it helps educators spend less time on administration and more time delivering great learning experiences.
In this episode, we speak with Lida Diavolitsi, Vice President of Sales and Customer Relations at DreamClass. The discussion centers around the operational challenges schools face and how DreamClass, a cloud-based school management platform, addresses these issues by centralizing workflows such as student records, admissions, attendance tracking, grading, and financials. Lida shares insights on the evolution of DreamClass from a tool for consolidating operations to a system that provides actionable insights through automation and AI. The conversation highlights the measurable benefits schools experience, such as significant time savings and improved data management, when adopting DreamClass. The episode concludes with a discussion on the future of school operations, emphasizing a shift towards paper-free, data-driven environments.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- DreamClass centralizes school operations, reducing the need for multiple disconnected tools.
- Automation in DreamClass significantly cuts down on repetitive administrative tasks.
- AI in DreamClass aids in better decision-making and data interpretation.
- Schools using DreamClass report significant time savings in administrative processes.
- DreamClass improves communication between schools, teachers, and parents.
- The platform offers a trial period, allowing schools to test its features before committing.
- DreamClass integrates with existing tools like Stripe and QuickBooks for seamless operations.
- The platform supports a paper-free, data-driven future for school operations.
- DreamClass helps schools transition from manual to automated processes, enhancing efficiency.
- The platform is designed to be user-friendly, reducing the learning curve for new users.
Chapters
00:01 – Intro to school ops and DreamClass overview
01:31 – DreamClass origin: solving disconnected tools
03:29 – Where admin time leaks: attendance and billing
05:27 – From paper to platform: reducing wasted effort
08:09 – Measurable outcomes: time savings and control
10:28 – Attendance flows and automated parent alerts
11:46 – Peace of mind from real-time shared data
13:02 – Billing automation and overdue reminders
13:57 – Adoption challenge and intuitive design choices
14:16 – Onboarding, support, and all-in-one structure
17:22 – Getting started: trial, rollout options, pacing
18:54 – Full adoption vs phased approach by schools
20:18 – Why trials matter in the SIS market
22:12 – Automations that matter: billing and enrollment
25:06 – Automation as repetition, AI as optional layer
28:04 – Most-used dashboards: attendance and finances
30:03 – Integrations: Stripe, QuickBooks, and open API
32:51 – The future: paper-free and data-driven schools
35:58 – Where to learn more: demo and free trial
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:01.442)
Hello everyone and welcome to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Today’s conversation is all about the operational side of running a school, the admin work that has to happen so that learning can actually happen. And my guest today is Lida Diavolitsi, Vice President of Sales and Customer Relations at DreamClass. DreamClass is an all-in-one cloud-based school management platform designed for schools that want to centralize key workflows, things like student records, admissions, attendance, tracking, grading, and school financials. All those things need to be centralized without stitching together a dozen separate apps.
And because DreamClass includes student teacher and parental portals, this isn’t just about making life easier for administrators. It’s also about keeping families informed without emails getting lost, logins getting forgotten, or important updates falling through the cracks. So in this episode, I want to keep things very practical and cover what actually pushes a school to finally say, we need to change how we’re doing this because there has to be a better way. With that said,
Let me bring in Lida to talk more about DreamClass. Lida, welcome to the podcast. Glad you could join us.
Lida Diavolitsi (01:10.744)
Beau, it’s great to see you today and thank you so much for hosting this podcast. As you mentioned before, my name is Lida and I run the commercial departments of DreamClass. And I’m excited today to share some stories with you about our customer base and what we’ve learned all those years that we’ve been supporting our customer base.
Beau Hamilton (01:31.202)
Perfect. Well, it’s great to have you here, Lida. Can you take us back to the origin point of DreamClass? What was the problem that DreamClass was originally set out to solve?
Lida Diavolitsi (01:42.683)
Absolutely. So DreamQuest originally set out to solve a very practical but painful problem. We’ve noticed that schools essentially, excuse me, schools were running on too many disconnected tools, right? That could be Excel sheets for attendance, email for communication. They had billing, another Excel sheet for billing on another system grading that the teachers also had in another Excel. So as you can understand, those separate systems needed one single area. So Dreamplus became that all-in-one system so that admin work was less focused on facilitation and more on students themselves. Now as we work with more schools, that mission evolved. So today is not just about centralizing operations, it’s about helping schools make sense of their data.
And this is actually where also AI is helping us tremendously. It’s more about automating repetitive work so that schools can make better decisions. So I’ve witnessed this transition from becoming a system of just consolidation to be transitioning to a system of record and a system of insights for our schools.
Beau Hamilton (03:01.442)
Gotcha. Yeah, I know the automations are really kind of the key of the platform. And one of the things that I think schools really look to incorporate, right, to just sort of improve upon a lot of the reduce some of the kind of mundane tasks and improve like the overall kind of work life balance of administrators and everybody involved. Before we talk about maybe some of the specific software features, I do want to kind of zoom out and talk about some of those like, you know, the tasks, the time that it takes admin to do all those like little tiny tasks that add up over a week or a semester, right? From what you’re seeing working with schools, where does that time leak typically happen?
Lida Diavolitsi (03:45.189)
You actually said yourself before and it’s the same, it’s repetitive work on admin tasks, right? So our schools have attendance, if any new school owner is listening to this, attendance is number one, right?
Listen to this. I’ve seen Excel like that. There’s an Excel where an admin literally goes in and puts a column for each week, if not day, because regulation in the state says that you need to track attendance daily. So imagine how an Excel file look like with columns that say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Chaos, right?
So most of the repetitive tasks are about manual attendance tracking. Then we have to have sustainable business. So chasing payments. is literally schools hire somebody that goes through lists and lists consolidated. So open, overdue, paid, because at end of the day, they want to go to paid. So updating records across those operations. And with DreamClass, what we’ve done is we’ve studied those models of repetitive work. And we have now one platform where information is entered and it flows uninterrupted throughout all the different stakeholders that are involved in running the school. So admins don’t have essentially to reconcile all those five or six core operations, which is attendance, registration, billing, grading, and communication.
Beau Hamilton (05:26.946)
Gotcha. it sounds like from a day to day perspective, before a school is working with DreamClass and incorporating your platform, it’s a lot of times it’s teachers sitting down and opening these Excel spreadsheets and literally checking, like putting Xs and boxes, which not only just takes a bunch of time, but it’s just a little bit archaic, right? It’s almost a kid, it’s a one step past maybe pen and paper, I would say.
Lida Diavolitsi (05:43.884)
Yes.
Lida Diavolitsi (05:52.801)
Yes, and reality is, at best they have an Excel file. Sometimes we work with schools that they trust us with the following flow. Teachers have a…
a piece of paper with names on it, then at the end or during they give it to an admin and the admin does the cross-checking that you said. So time is just wasted on both of key people involved. Teachers should teach, the register and the admin team should make important decisions based on data that they see. So that is one of the
key areas that Dreamless goes and integrates in to essentially allow schools to grow more naturally.
Beau Hamilton (06:46.414)
Gotcha. Yeah, I know it’s 2026. And I feel like it’s to say or assume that schools are using some sort of platform to manage these areas. But it sounds like a lot of times when you’re first discussing with an organization and a school, they’re using a lot of these kind of, I don’t know, practices and tools.
Lida Diavolitsi (07:06.136)
And when I said to schools, know, if people listen to this focus, not everybody is on the same pace as far as technology is concerned. think at least for us, 95 % of the schools that we talk to on the sales department don’t have.
another software in place. They come from heavily accelerated processes and pen and paper. So I’m just saying that to people that it is not a shame and not everybody’s on the same pace. And I love to introduce new technologies to new schools. And I totally respect that sometimes schools don’t want to lose time. to, because our market has a lot of systems also that it’s another podcast for another time.
what kind of systems these are. So I just want to say that yes, it’s 126, but we’re here for any school of any size and at any path that they’re in with their tech staff.
Beau Hamilton (08:08.652)
Now, when schools typically decide to switch platforms or switch to a platform like DreamClass, it’s usually, I imagine, because something isn’t working, right? I’m curious what kinds of measurable results do schools actually see after moving to a platform like yours that school leaders could look to and see justifying switching to a new platform?
Lida Diavolitsi (08:29.08)
The first one that we’ve because we conduct occasional in most weekly we conduct customer stories with schools that we have open running. So we hear their stories and schools consistently significant savings between hours per week or sometimes even weeks worth of savings. So I’ll give you an example.
We spoke to a school just this week in London that used to need 15 to 20 minutes to delete a student. Once, let’s say, students decided that they’re not going to follow the program, the team needed to go across several tabs to delete a student because there was the student’s name on the attendance tab. There was the student’s name on the class where the teacher
took attendance and also tracked grades. There was the financial tab person that needed to update this, right? 15 to 20 minutes. Now with DreamClass, you just need one minute or like 30 seconds. And we measured that with DreamClass for 240 students that she has, she only needs the equivalence of 40 minutes to do that job. And in her current way, she needed one and a half.
worth of days, sorry, one and a half weeks to do the equivalence. So the first and the measurable result around such a simple task, deleting a student. Now with attendance, we’ve understood that the process has improved around 70 to 85 % because imagine that in dream class, there’s just one area that you see all your students and you track their attendance.
Beau Hamilton (10:04.172)
Hello?
Lida Diavolitsi (10:27.608)
In that flow, the parents are also at the same time involved. When you have an Excel spreadsheet, you need to maintain, as I told you, create every day a new column about attendance, which is admin, and then you need to call the parent in case the kid is not at school. With Dream +, you have an automated flow where the parent gets notified. So the improvement on attendance is…
demonstrable, but we also see improved payment collection rates. We also see that there is a better visibility across departments. So you have the performance team and the billing team and the registered team deciding on information that is updated. I really want to stress this, because when schools have Excel sheets,
if one of the people are sick, things that happen in real life, and that person doesn’t maintain the data, the team cannot have peace of mind. So the biggest result that we’ve seen is actually peace of mind where schools can feel in control of their operations again.
Beau Hamilton (11:45.39)
Well, that’s a great example with the student just trying to delete a student who has dropped out of the class. I mean, that saving 40 minutes. I mean, it’s amazing to me that it takes that long to execute that task. Yeah, that’s nuts.
Lida Diavolitsi (12:00.171)
It takes one week for all of their population. can take up to a week to do this for one school. Yes.
Beau Hamilton (12:05.132)
Yeah, for one student.
Yeah, that’s, mean, I can just see the time savings add up just from that one task alone, let alone the other kind of examples you mentioned. So that’s huge. mean, again, those are great, like measurable results to look at when contemplating a new platform like yours. know that leadership really does need to look at kind of that proof and to see that the change is worth it. That being said, know like,
Lida Diavolitsi (12:33.954)
Yeah, and imagine, I’m sorry to interrupt there, but I just want to say if you feel like attendance is a lot to have just one, to need one week to make sure that your data is consolidated and that you’re not reaching out to a parent who has already taken their kid from your school. Imagine how billing feels. Billing is sensitive, right? Some people pay on time, some people don’t pay on time. So schools had to go through
Beau Hamilton (12:37.07)
You’re good.
Lida Diavolitsi (13:02.558)
endless tabs to make sure that I have all of the invoices paid correctly. And with Dreamcast, just, notifications for overdue payments are automated. You don’t need to chase, you just need to read the data and take action when necessary. But the system essentially is your personal assistant doing it for you.
Beau Hamilton (13:25.186)
That’s another good point too. It’s like, don’t, that’s not a fun task trying to kind of go in and remind parents and users to pay.
Lida Diavolitsi (13:32.222)
No, it’s not fun because our community also is small schools, so it’s a very delicate subject. having, being able to outsource this to the software is, I always say this, the good and the bad cup. So we would rather be the bad person in this, but make sure that our schools have a sustainable business because receiving your payments on time is critical.
Beau Hamilton (13:38.167)
Absolutely.
Beau Hamilton (13:46.723)
Mm.
Beau Hamilton (13:56.76)
Absolutely. Now I know one of the biggest risks with any school software is adoption, especially with teachers and staff who might already have their plates full. There might be a learning curve associated with a new platform like yours. What have you done to make DreamClass intuitive enough that people actually enjoy using it instead of resisting it?
Lida Diavolitsi (14:01.016)
Thank
Only.
Lida Diavolitsi (14:16.44)
Well, it’s always every day we are trying to understand our schools better. we have the they call it customer care. Sometimes we just call it the customer department. So first and foremost, we are like a we’re like an extension of our customers team.
If you talk to any of our customers right now, they will tell you that the customer support department is literally like their own team. So when an account is getting started with us, we make sure that onboarding is completed correctly in all the areas that we know they’re necessary. I don’t know why, but the majority of our customers start from the beginning.
to inherit and adopt Dunglass across departments. So registration, admissions, attendance, academic and billing. So we have to tick a lot of boxes in one area. So we couldn’t have done it without human support that we ask our customers, what is your goal for the near future? And then we add as we progress. But first we target those five areas.
We couldn’t have done that without a product that also allows us to be simple, reduce learning curves. So our market’s average is six months, right? So when DreamClass came to disrupt the SIS market, it happened through a simple product where everything is in one area. And actually with DreamClass, you don’t have to buy separate parts of the product.
We know that in order to run a sustainable school, you need to have excellence. It’s all those five core areas that I outlined before. And in though, in any substitution you go with Dreamcast, those are integrated into your account. So having a system that’s designed how, how schools actually work, you know what I mean? But not how software thinks they should. Cause I’ve never heard in my life, a school owner saying,
Lida Diavolitsi (16:24.862)
I need to run my administration, but I don’t need to have billing. So I really don’t understand competition here why they kept selling compartmentalized parts of their product, but that’s, that’s on them. So the interface is also clean. is everything is on one area and it has the name that you should, you should access attendance, billing, registration. What’s interesting is also that teachers appreciate having
Beau Hamilton (16:36.398)
You
Lida Diavolitsi (16:53.858)
their everyday tasks into one area because they also use a different, from their perspective, different parts of the product. And the admins love that information is not consolidated into the teacher spreadsheets or the teacher’s systems. So everybody sees the immediate wins. Information is flowing from teachers across the department of administration and register. And when that happens, adoption just happens naturally.
Beau Hamilton (17:21.026)
Yeah, if you can see the results it makes using the platform all the more friendly and welcoming. I imagine there’s some sort of probably trial period too where schools can test it out to make sure it’s being well received before going all in. I knew you mentioned like the onboarding process, but I’m curious, what is like the typical get started process look like with DreamClass? Do they like roll it out department by department or do schools go all in on day one?
Lida Diavolitsi (17:27.18)
Yeah.
Lida Diavolitsi (17:34.389)
Yes!
Lida Diavolitsi (17:48.917)
you touched on very interesting areas there. And I just want to say that thank you for highlighting that Dreamplus comes with the trial because I love calling it the test drive, right? Before you commit to Dreamplus into any of the subscriptions that you can afford, we have monthly and yearly contracts for all the schools of all sizes out there, but you can test drive it. There’s a seven day trial and people highlight this also on our
customer reviews are like, I can taste everything. I can taste how the support looks like. I could see the knowledge base and how that is going to support me when I have questions. But also I could feel the product, right? Right there. Because when you’re creating a trial, it’s not like a demo server situation. You can be there like a customer. And that has been something that our market has been rewarding us for. And they see the value in the test drive, as I call it. So.
Beau Hamilton (18:31.118)
Right.
Lida Diavolitsi (18:47.604)
going back from pre-sales to after a customer has made a decision.
Lida Diavolitsi (18:54.456)
for reasons that I think I told you before, 75 % of our customers adopted all at once, right? They see, in order to make a decision, most schools have to identify those problematic areas, as I told you, across the attendance, grading, invoicing, and billing. So they roll out everything at once to eliminate their main issue, which has been silos.
The other 25 % is starting with admissions or billing, just because those are critical areas. And they expand once they see the value. And this is, again, where we work together with the customer, like a partner, and we’re setting goals for the next semester once the problem areas have been alleviated. This is kind of what we see in the schools that we support.
Beau Hamilton (19:52.76)
Gotcha. Yeah, I love. Well, I love just generally speaking, you know, there’s a reason why you see a lot of software providers offer trials because he let the kind of results speak for themselves. And I mean, who doesn’t want to kind of it is kind of a daunting task or like an idea to just go all in on one one big platform, especially across a whole school. So you got to get your feet wet. You got to like test it out for yourself and go kind of little by little, department by department or, you know,
Lida Diavolitsi (19:53.793)
Both photos.
Lida Diavolitsi (20:18.742)
Yeah. And Bo, I know that you’re interviewing so many different organizations and very successful businesses in the software and service industry. For some reason, having a free trial, is not a characteristic of the market we serve. SIS platforms most of the times didn’t have that. And DreamPlus is revolutionizing this in our market. we see it as our responsibility. The same way you literally
you test drive your car before you buy it, why would you trust a seller’s point of view without using the product? This is my advice to any customer out there, like test drive it. It doesn’t matter if the seller, you know, even for me, challenge me. It doesn’t matter how good it looks like. You really need to try it.
Beau Hamilton (20:51.853)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Hamilton (20:57.196)
Right.
Beau Hamilton (21:06.658)
Mm-hmm.
Lida Diavolitsi (21:11.542)
to see if you’re ready for that type of software for your school. And there’s no one that knows this better than the person that’s on the research for a new system for their school. Those are just my two cents for you to also compare with other software as a service. Because for me, was, I’ve always served people who can test drive a software before buying it. But I noticed through a competitive analysis that we run that this is not.
something that was on our market and we brought it.
Beau Hamilton (21:42.348)
Yeah, that’s interesting. I’m glad you pointed that out because I’m so, I’m so accustomed to it. Just like you said, talking to different software providers and leaders in the space, it’s like, that’s pretty common to see a trial offered, but yeah, I didn’t realize it’s not necessarily as common in your industry. Now, let’s talk about some more of the specific software components. Now, as with, you know, any piece of software, there’s obviously some level of automation baked in with certain tasks. You’ve, you’ve mentioned a number of different use cases there.
Lida Diavolitsi (21:48.138)
Yes.
Lida Diavolitsi (21:54.487)
yeah, definitely not given. Yes, not given.
Beau Hamilton (22:11.918)
And I know that that term automation typically leads people to think about AI, but it could be more kind of simple or like old school automations. Like if an application is incomplete for X amount of days, the system automatically email parents with a reminder or students who are absent get automatically notified, like the parents get automatically notified, things like that. What are some of the automations found in dream class? And then where are they making the biggest real world impact?
Lida Diavolitsi (22:12.309)
Mm-hmm.
Lida Diavolitsi (22:27.224)
Okay.
Lida Diavolitsi (22:42.172)
and you said, again, you just articulated beautifully there. You mentioned that every time somebody thinks about automation, you’re like AI, AI to infinity. What I say is, where, when, and where is automation needed? And my answer will always be where repetition exists. AI cannot take you from your Excel.
Beau Hamilton (22:51.714)
Right.
Lida Diavolitsi (23:09.096)
and take you to something completely different. The flow is you identify that every day it takes you 30 minutes to track attendance and dream class 30 seconds. So you need that 98.5 % efficiency I just mentioned. And that is a perfect example of not going zero to a hundred, but
Automation is there through DreamClass, through you name it. So those areas are not notified, are noticed in billing and enrollment workflows in communication and reporting. So for example, automated invoices and reminders reduce that manual follow up that the treasurer has to do. And instead of going in your Excel,
to filter the unpaid, then to find, go to the other person that has the communication to get the emails and then go to your mailbox. No. One area that you can find the unpaid invoices and decide, that’s on you. We give people options. Do you want to send out maybe manual reminders or do you want the system to send it for you? Both, again, it has to do with that readiness level I spoke of before.
Beau Hamilton (24:16.491)
Thank
Lida Diavolitsi (24:35.372)
Customers in Dreamplus can decide which way it’s better, but schools have started to shift from that process to the people. And that’s where Dreamplus, what Dreamplus uses to define what it means to go from repetitive workflow to automation, that you can focus on your people and not on your processes.
Beau Hamilton (25:05.83)
I really like that. also like your, you’re you likened automations to just repetition, right? And I don’t think I’ve heard someone kind of just put it in that like cut and paste kind of, phrasing there, because when you put it like that, like automation and AI is just kind of solving the repetition. It also kind of alleviates sort of the, the, maybe like the worries and like uncertainty around incorporating it in the first place. whether that’s like
Lida Diavolitsi (25:13.335)
Yeah!
Beau Hamilton (25:34.442)
the kind of like doomsday, you know, replacing humans and not like having a human in the loop. But like nobody likes having, nobody likes doing a super repetitive Monday tasks, right? So if you’re able to automate a lot of those to allow, to free up other areas, like if it’s, especially with the school, I mean, there’s no shortage of, like the more time you’re able to have with students and with parents and communicating and actually teaching, that’s a huge, that’s what it’s all about.
Lida Diavolitsi (25:34.604)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Lida Diavolitsi (26:03.456)
And Bo, it’s what you said before with AI. AI, yes, sure. There are places for AI, but when schools can identify, and this is what I hope and wish that anyone listening to this podcast could go from, there’s levels to automation, right? Even if you stay and you observe.
that you track attendance, you catch yourself attendance on Excel or attendance on a spreadsheet, start there. You don’t need to focus on everything else at the same time. And yes, DreamClass has AI on several parts of the product. Teachers, for example, can decide according to the grades that they’ve put on the platform. DreamClass has AI suggesting what you should include in the report card based on those.
Not everybody can inherit that. It’s optional. We’re not going to push anyone. think AI is here just to help us make better decisions and read sometimes the data better because we’re also busy. Sometimes we don’t interpret the data the way that we should. So I think sometimes I call it that the AI has this clarity of mind sometimes. But again, there’s layers to optimization. And I think our customers can start there and ask themselves, how many?
Times. no, how much time does it take me to delete someone? From wherever I have it now. If it takes you more than a minute, you need a software.
Beau Hamilton (27:36.138)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it is. I think everyone can relate there and see the value there, absolutely. then, obviously, your platform is like a comprehensive solution set. But you don’t need to necessarily take advantage of every single feature and automation necessarily. At the same time, yeah, you can see how it works, what doesn’t, and of start moving out from there.
Lida Diavolitsi (27:37.718)
I think that’s very prep-backed. think everybody… Yes.
Lida Diavolitsi (27:56.491)
at the same time.
Lida Diavolitsi (28:03.585)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Hamilton (28:04.36)
So at the core of these automations, though, is data, right? Which needs to be accurate, of course, but it also needs to be easy to see and it needs to be easy to act on. Which dashboards or reports tend to be the most popular for admins when they want a really clear snapshot of how the school is actually operating?
Lida Diavolitsi (28:23.41)
because there are different people accessing the platform. I, my brain is going to answer this question based on roles. admin, admins usually see, insights around attendance and enrollment dashboards. So that’s huge for them because if a kid is not in the school, they, they need to know why, because that means you’re not.
not there to be educated. So they’re definitely are looking out for those. Also, the leadership department is looking out on the billing and financials. So they’re always going in. They’re the ones who call Dreamcast the personal assistants because they just go in, they see revenue and they see where attention needs to go. And they use that.
as immediately to see trends, they usually would take days to uncover with the treasurer or the billing department. So the leadership team shows a clear preference over billing insights. As far as standing payments are concerned, that’s an admin role for Dreamglass, but the billing department really needs to see.
where attention needs to go for open payments, especially towards the end of semesters or towards the end of the year. sometimes we have throughout the year reports that are always favorable, but sometimes we also have seasonal preferences according to which time of the year we’re in. For example, report cards, dashboards might need to be accessed during that era. I hope I answered that question correctly.
Beau Hamilton (30:03.18)
You did. You did. Thanks for kind of breaking it down to based off the role and kind of, you know, specific sort of tasks that admins are required to do and interested in completing. Another area I’m curious about are integrations because most schools typically, you know, they’re probably not starting from scratch. They already have tools in place, even if that’s just Excel. They can’t just abandon some of these tools overnight. How does DreamClass fit into that reality?
Lida Diavolitsi (30:07.519)
Yeah.
Lida Diavolitsi (30:18.339)
Mm-hmm.
Beau Hamilton (30:32.607)
and connect with things like payment systems or communication platforms that schools are already using.
Lida Diavolitsi (30:38.335)
Thank you so much, And as you said, think great point that we’re not here to replace everything. But the majority of our customer base uses some tools, one being Stripe for payments. So sometimes they were using it even before we were in the picture. So DreamClass connects natively with a payment gateway called Stripe so that schools can continue their
payment system, even when using DreamPlus. Another one is sometimes because the interesting thing is that the main problem that everybody solves before they find an SIS is how to receive payments because that’s going to keep them alive. So they use sometimes QuickBooks. So we have a very easy way for them to download all the invoices and just send them to QuickBooks and API. Absolutely. So DreamPlus has an open API. So if schools…
It’s the second preferred, but if schools want to build their own workflows, we’re there to support them. And as I said, the goal is not to replace everything. The goal is to have information flowing from whatever systems our customers are using to connect that into the ecosystem and have data that is flowing smoothly so that schools don’t have to jump between platforms so that they can make a decision right there.
Beau Hamilton (32:03.67)
Yeah, think school admins and leaders listening are to really light up listening and hearing some of those integrations you just mentioned with QuickBooks and Stripe and others. that’s just, it makes the learning curve a lot easier too, adopting a platform. then, yeah, just makes the whole kind of.
Lida Diavolitsi (32:23.321)
I just want to say I’m sorry to Google because I didn’t throw the Google Sheet into Microsoft. I love you, Excel. But it’s not for the operations that our customers have to run. You can still use it. We don’t want you to completely remove it, but just not to run workflows, not to run things that need to be connected. And there’s a next step and a next step. We want to keep this flowing like water.
Beau Hamilton (32:27.768)
Yeah.
Beau Hamilton (32:42.382)
Sure.
Beau Hamilton (32:50.51)
That makes sense. All right, well, I’m curious, like, if we look a few years ahead, know, things are changing pretty quickly in the in the software space. But I’m curious, like, where do you see the future of school operations? Like, where do you see dream class maybe fitting into this this future that we’re moving into?
Lida Diavolitsi (33:08.793)
That’s a great question. the future of school operations the way we see it is paper free. There’s that example I gave you, this is our mission to not have that pen and paper where somebody gives it to another person. So definitely paper free and data driven, automated.
schools will definitely rely less on manual processes and more on this translation of what the data means in real time. And that ultimately will result to how schools will support their students and their staff. Because automation is serving both of those personas for schools, both staff members and the community.
of the parents and the students. DreamClass, I believe, is helping schools going to that direction by ultimately replacing fragmented systems with one intelligent platform that is not just about, as I call it, storing data, but is about how schools act on it. And this is also our mission.
Beau Hamilton (34:35.214)
Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about. think that’s a great way to end it is just talk about, kind of migrate out of the pen and paper sort of like past and into this sort of data driven future with, with automations that help kind of alleviate some of these repetitive tasks that no one really enjoys doing. I think a platform, you know, like DreamClass really does seem like, like a really, like a win-win really for everyone involved, especially if it frees up time to focus on a lot of the more kind of meaningful work.
Lida Diavolitsi (34:48.077)
Yes.
Beau Hamilton (35:04.982)
like I mentioned earlier with communicating with teachers and staff and parents and students, like that’s what it’s all about. And I think that’s what makes it better is if you’re able to focus on that type of work and just.
Lida Diavolitsi (35:17.88)
And schools don’t have an excuse bow anymore. This is what I joke about it. And I tell them in our meetings with dream plus you can start $50 a month. there’s no, there’s no excuse anymore to go loud to adopt technologies that ultimately will just.
Beau Hamilton (35:20.523)
No.
Beau Hamilton (35:26.766)
Hmm.
Beau Hamilton (35:31.15)
Mm-hmm.
Lida Diavolitsi (35:36.658)
give you a place to look for insights and not just look for data. That’s the switch that I think in the future we’re going to start seeing. And AI is also helping schools in that direction, helping us make better decisions according to real time data. And Excel is not real time data. So confuse the two.
Beau Hamilton (35:58.03)
Now for listeners curious about DreamClass and interested in learning more, where should they go?
Lida Diavolitsi (36:08.711)
650-550-1918, they can call us. They can go to www.dreamcast.io. You can book a demo, can book a call. You can try the software on your own without talking to anyone if that’s your preference. And there’s a lot of articles and YouTube videos for you to see the product. And if it feels like a good fit, then talk to the sales department.
Beau Hamilton (36:33.326)
Perfect. All right, dreamclass.io. Start a free trial, see what it’s all about. Just Google and ChatGPT or your friends. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Lida. I really appreciate it.
Lida Diavolitsi (36:46.747)
Thank you so much and have a great day. Thank you so much, Beau.
Beau Hamilton (36:49.91)
All right, that’s Lida Diavolitsi, Vice President of Sales and Customer Relations at DreamClass. Thanks again for joining us. I really appreciate it.
Lida Diavolitsi (36:59.458)
Thank you so much for today and look forward to the next conversation.
Beau Hamilton (37:04.226)
Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.