Get acquainted with the "Cards" SaaS Solution for Managing Islamic Boarding Schools and Santri

Efforts to equalize digital solutions are still being pursued by various parties. This time it comes to solving management problems in Islamic boarding schools. The first initiative was initiated by Muh Arif Mahfudin (CEO), Hari Yuliawan (COO), and Agung SD (CTO) who were inspired during a discussion with administrators at an Islamic boarding school in Cilacap Regency, West Java.

"We met with the caretaker of the Al-Ihya Ullumadin Islamic Boarding School. He told me about the difficulties in managing the students' pocket money, which numbered more than 1.500 people. problem, starting from distributing daily allowances which is quite time-consuming, reporting missing money, recording inaccurate transactions, to reporting its usage to parents," said Arif when contacted DailySocial.id.

Before coming with Cards, actually the first product the three of them made was SaaS, named Cazh. The solution is not much different from other online cashier applications on the market, namely complete bookkeeping, integration with digital payment systems, and having its own online site.

This solution itself has been around since the company was founded in 2018. However, in its journey, Cazh has not escaped the impact of the pandemic. Finally, it required Arif and his friends to pivot, until finally convinced by the potential of the more promising Cards.

"Since the pandemic in March 2020, we have seen our POS users drop significantly because of the conditions at that time o forced to close operations, especially merchant culinary. This has an impact on our income."

Armed with internal data, it turns out merchant The POS that was still running at that time was the canteen at the Islamic boarding school. Then the team explored this matter further. "As a result, we developed the membership feature from Cazh into a complete service for schools as a Cards product, while Cazh Pos is a supporter of the Cards ecosystem."

Cards digital card ecosystem

After studying the problems at the Islamic boarding school, Arif and his team agreed to pivot. From the input, the Islamic boarding school administrators want a complete solution, not only a cashier application for the canteen, but also safe and easy transactions for pocket money, a management dashboard for the school, and an application that parents can use to monitor their children at the Islamic boarding school.

"They want banking solutions, such as using transactions e-money doesn't solve the problem. Although e-wallet It's a safe and easy non-cash alternative, but it can't be implemented in Islamic boarding schools because they are not allowed to bring it with them. smartphone. "For this reason, it is necessary to find a solution that suits the conditions and technology that allows it to be applied there."

Arif and his friends, who previously had a background in the world of finance, were challenged to see these challenges to be able to provide solutions so that Islamic boarding school management could be more efficient, starting from administration, pocket money management, to finances that could be carried out by the system.

"So the management's time, which was previously used to take care of administration, can focus on improving the quality of the student education system."

There are five parties connected within Cards ecosystem. First, school management can manage and monitor all data from one dashboard, whether for managing academic data, schedules, announcements, bills, student savings, managing cards, top-up, limit, block/unblock, and so on.

Second, teachers can manage data related to academics, lesson schedules, attendance and student report cards. Third, the canteen will have access to store management, employees, cash and non-cash sales, QR Codes for food menus, and sales reports.

Fourth, for parents there is a Cards application for top up balance as children's pocket money, limit daily transactions, view balance history, pay school bills, view attendance, information, schedules, and even report cards. Finally, students will get an exclusive ID card with a design that can be customized with school branding.

This card becomes their identity inside and outside school, the balance can be used for snacks in the canteen, paying bills in admin, and attendance. If the card is lost, it can be blocked and replaced with a new one, with the guarantee that the balance remains safe.

This startup from Purwokerto is also determined to expand the adoption of Cards to more Islamic boarding schools. The reason is, the Islamic boarding school population of more than 30 thousand with a total of around six million students have relatively the same problems. It is certain that Cards solutions are built based on real problems in the field.

"Solutions from upstream to downstream are our mainstay for Islamic boarding schools. We help with digitalization not only from the transaction and financial side, but starting from providing the boarding school website, the system for accepting new students, paying bills or the term here, Jariyah money, to facilities for alumni. "

"So actually what differentiates us from others is the strong ecosystem between students, institutions, parents, boarding school business units and alumni, which allows them to continue to be connected," continued Arif.

Next plan

Arif explained that since Cards started in March 2021, the solution has now been used by more than 190 Islamic boarding schools and private schools from kindergarten to high school. Of the total users, 80% of them come from Islamic boarding school institutions, the rest from private schools. The average number of students per school ranges from 300-500 students. The majority of locations are in second and third tier cities in Central Java and West Java.

Furthermore, from there the total number of users, there are 65 thousand student and santri cards that have been distributed and can be used as a transaction tool in their school canteens. In terms of nominal transactions, it is claimed to reach IDR 143 billion for more than two million transactions in 2022.

In the future, Cards will be enhanced with complete digital banking solutions for the world of education in schools and Islamic boarding schools, starting from payments, finance, to financing. Not only, the function of Cards is for cross selling, allowing students to make transactions outside their Islamic boarding school ecosystem.

With this B2B business model, Arif admits that his party can cover all its operations from the income it regularly obtains every month. For the record, Cazh, with its previous product, received initial funding thanks to being an incubation participant at Indigo (Telkom). These funds are used for product development.

"This year we plan to accelerate service expansion and product development. For this reason, we still need investment support from other parties in relation to this."

Regarding the POS Cazh business prospects, Arif emphasized that the product is still running, it's just that it is no longer marketed massively as a main product, only limited to Islamic boarding schools and schools. Currently the product team is still working on developing Cazh Pos version two which focuses on improving features and adding membership features and loyalty programs.

It is hoped that the presence of this latest feature can boost the adoption of Cards as a membership platform for customers merchant Cards. "We plan to release it at the beginning of the second quarter of this year. We hope that Cazh Pos is not just a POS, but also supports merchants with attractive customer programs and is connected to the Cards ecosystem," he concluded.