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Since 2005, inRESONANCE has been improving the experience for SYA administrators and schools. Steve Kirk, director of Finance and Operations, joined SYA in 2003. Steve sees real benefits in SYA's choice of PORTAL and KEYSTONE , some of them unexpected. "We are four separate schools,in France, Italy, Spain, and China,working together. Before PORTAL, there was no easy way to get on the same page, to use the same data. We were using a home-made Access database, but it was not useful. Now, for the first time, we are tracking real admissions data. Before PORTAL, we weren't even entering leads. We didn't start tracking until an application arrived. Now we manage leads and inquiries in a much more dynamic way. We're easily producing letters and other communications. "Using PORTAL, we can effectively communicate with our home schools. Our database coordinates information about the hundreds of schools from which we draw students, as well as all our contacts, interviewers, advocates, and the natural families of our students. "We are not like other schools: essentially, we're a one-year school, so we don't track a student's progress throughout several years. We use PORTAL primarily to track the applications process. iR has been willing to customize a lot for us, so we use it effectively. "Of all the vendors we looked at, iR seemed the most willing to customize. We did not know enough to build anything ourselves , what were we supposed to track? iR had the experience of working with hundreds of clients, and then they customized their solution to our needs. "After 18 months experience with PORTAL, we installed KEYSTONE. It was a big shift for us. We were going to start using the same basic data that was used overseas. In the past, the physical files themselves went overseas and we got them back at the end of the students' experience, as alumni data, which we track in Raiser's Edge. Now, using KEYSTONE, we can see who the students are, who their host families are; it's a much more seamless transition.