Solving a Need
Manage1to1 was founded by two business partners (at the time coworkers) at a public school. When a 1:1 deployment was started in 2009, there was nothing on the market available to catalog the impressive amount of information we needed to store. We began by using our library software and then a combination of spreadsheets, Access databases and the library software. We quickly realized that this method was pretty cumbersome and incomplete for our needs. After a few years of coding at night, Manage1to1 was born, intended for internal use. Little did we know, this is where the entire journey would begin.
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Better Visibility on Your Deployment
Our Birth
Manage1to1 started life in 2012 in many late-night coding sessions, when spreadsheets and Access databases were simply not enough to document all of the necessary information. Even with a relatively small department, we ran into logistical issues with single students causing multiple breakage events, that went unnoticed because of the inability to perform lookups easily. We needed a tool that would allow us to gather data in a quick and efficient manner.
One Year Later
After a full year of writing code, we were able to deploy a solution that fulfilled most of our needs. We were able to look up students individually, search for devices and also have full searchable historical data. This was a huge step forward, although the user interface was not anything to brag about! We were able to easily store notes and damage reports now, but more was to come.
Harnessing the Data
Quickly we were realizing how much information we were “missing” by not having a system we could go through and gather datapoints out of. Excel only worked so well, and tracking year to year changes was nearly impossible. With a district of nearly 2000 students and over 1100 1:1 devices (not including teachers), we simply didn’t have time to constantly go back to past years to compare data, check for repeat offenders, etc.
More Improvements
This was the year that we were able to really focus on making improvements. We had a full year of using this new system under our belt and we had added features such as invoice creation, exporting of data, and password management. To think, all of this was done in the spare time at home, what could we do if we dedicated our full day to it?
This was also an interesting year because neighboring districts began coming to our district to learn about our successes and failures. We had just begun our 5th year of 1:1, so we had a lot of information to share. One thing that kept coming up was how important it was to have a tool. So when we showed the homemade tool we had, the districts looking really liked the tool and asked about how to obtain it. A change in district leadership this year had us considering leaving the district, so a change was already on the table.
Four Years Later…
Four years after our nighttime project began, we decided to leave the school at the end of the 2015-2016 year and focus on our product fully. We had deployed in the summertime and immediately had several districts sign on, so they could be prepared for their 2016 school year. We had a user interface that was presentable, but the features that were there was the key to our initial success!
Major Changes and Enhancements
Two years after venturing out on the “one man shop” of Manage1to1 deployment, we have a small team built up to work on enhancements. We were lucky enough to employ former school employees who really understood the market and able to lead the development in the correct direction. The user interface got better and better and it was feeling like a “real” product now!
A New Challenge
2020 proved to be a new adventure for everyone. We had major features lined up, but when the pandemic struck, we had a huge influx of new districts that were suddenly tossed into a 1:1 environment. This allowed us to help many new districts with getting their 1:1 going successfully, but it also caused us to slow down on development while we assisted. We were able to provide a refreshed user interface and many features however, but this onboarding of new districts was also a great thing. It provided us with a lot of new ideas and suggestions!
Our Leadership
Andrew Herweyer
Business Development Director
Former K-12 Technology Coordinator
Marcus Allen
Sr. Developer
Former K-12 Technology Coordinator
Michael Batt
Systems Architect
Former K-12 Systems Engineer