• Orange County Educational Arts Academy (OCEAA) is a unique school in Orange County with innovative programs
• OCEAA implemented Helios in 2008 to manage certificated and classified employees
• Helios helps OCEAA in credentialing, reporting to Orange County and parent district, and benefit tracking
• A typical report now takes only 2 minutes to prepare compared to 45 minutes earlier

OCEAA is another school that has realized its maximum potential with Helios. It provides all students with an exemplary education founded in a rich academic program, the arts, multiple intelligences, language learning, environmental stewardship and creative technology.

The school uses Helios to manage its teachers' credentials and employee data on just about everything from demographics to benefits to work history. It implemented Helios in 2008 having heard about its benefits from other charter schools. Sylvia Munoz, the school's business manager, has had more time at hand to take care of other important issues after OCEAA put Helios into action.

"We were doing everything manually out of employees' manila folders. Some of our data was in Excel but everytime we needed a new report we had to revise the spreadsheets. It was very time consuming," explains Sylvia in a nutshell.

Sylvia's staff member Gabriela has been working with Helios for several months now. Gabriela learned how to use Helios in just one training session and runs reports from Helios regularly. "Earlier, it took us 45 minutes to create a detailed employee report; now it takes only 2," says Gabriela, her eyes lighting up.

Helios has given OCEAA the ability to quickly look up complete employee profiles. Moreover, OCEAA can generate its critical Orange County mandated report in just a click with real-time data.

One of the advantages Sylvia and Gabriela find higly time-saving is the automatic credential and TB reminders. Gone are the days when you have to manually sift through employee files to send letters for credential and TB expirations.

Helios has also proved a very useful planning tool for OCEAA. Salary and benefit information in Helios has helped the school with budgeting and planning salary expenses.

OCEAA is now all set to pilot the latest Helios 2009 features of managing employee vacation and sick time. This will further save a "huge chunk" of time for Sylvia and Gabriela.