1. Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Online School Network Grows with Scalable
Education Enablement Solution
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Education
Customer Profile
The National Network of Digital
Schools (NNDS) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit
management foundation, dedicated to
providing the highest-quality K-12
online curriculum and comprehensive
management services to schools.
Business Situation
The organization needed to establish a
student information system and
related IT infrastructure that it could
roll out to its online member schools.
Solution
NNDS built its student information
system on Microsoft Dynamics CRM
and integrated the solution with
Microsoft Dynamics GP for financial
management and various front-end
educational systems.
Benefits
 Enable high-quality education for
students everywhere
 Accelerate solution development
 Scale with growth
“By moving away from traditional education and other
online-education models, we aim to offer more active
engagement, more interaction, and more commitment
from the students so that they take responsibility for
their learning. We implemented technology to that
end, and it serves us well.”
Dr. Nick Trombetta, CEO, Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School
Following the success of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School,
the school’s leaders established the National Network of Digital
Schools (NNDS) to bring the benefits of online education to
students and school districts everywhere. To do so required the
organization to build a student information system (SIS) and
service delivery infrastructure that could scale with the growing
school network. NNDS implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM
for managing student accounts, school accounts, and the help
desk and integrated it with Microsoft Dynamics GP for financial
management. The organization also created its own SIS based
on capabilities present in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Development took minimal time and resulted in a powerful SIS
that, together with the Microsoft Dynamics solutions, helps
NNDS support the rapidly growing number of member
organizations committed to excellent online education.

2. Situation
Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School (PA
Cyber) is one of the oldest and most
innovative online charter schools in the
United States. Since its inception in 2000,
PA Cyber’s popularity has grown
immensely. Originally established to
serve 50 students who were left without
educational services because of a school
district that had closed, the school’s
attendance grew to 500 students in PA
Cyber’s first year. Since then, attendance
has expanded well beyond 9,200
students. Seeing the positive results of
PA Cyber, Dr. Nick Trombetta, the
school’s CEO, established the National
Network of Digital Schools (NNDS) in
2005 to make PA Cyber’s successful
model for online education available
nationwide. NNDS is a 501(c)3 nonprofit
management foundation dedicated to
providing the highest-quality K-12 online
curriculum and comprehensive
management services to traditional
charter schools and cyber schools
focused on expanding educational
opportunities for students. NNDS also
serves traditional schools that look to
complement their classroom
environment with more flexible and well-
proven online offerings.
Reflecting on the early years of online
education, Dr. Trombetta notes that, “At
first, the technology platform for
building the first cyber school was very
much trial and error.” In its early years,
PA Cyber relied on Intuit QuickBooks for
financial management and a host of off-
the-shelf and open-source systems to
help facilitate online education for
teachers and students. When NNDS grew
out of PA Cyber, this technology soon
was challenged to support a U.S.$20-
million-a-year organization with growing
numbers of schools and students. NNDS
management understood that the
organization would need more advanced
financial-management tools and a more
versatile SIS to enable it to deliver
educational services of outstanding
quality and support students, families,
and teachers effectively. Nicole Granito,
Academy Leader for PA Cyber, says,
“Considering our growth, size, and the
extensive educational services we
provide, not many schools are
comparable to PA Cyber. We had
exhausted the capabilities of the
software we used at the time. Most
applications fell short when it came to
compatibility with other applications.
Students could track their courses, but
they couldn’t see their attendance
records or receive their email.”
To better support the growing
organization and meet the demand for
online education, NNDS management
decided to develop a new IT strategy.
NNDS looked for a richly featured SIS
and a flexible, reliable financial-
management solution that could
integrate with other systems, make
administrators’ and teachers’ lives easier,
and align with the goals of supporting
the best educational experience possible.
Solution
After reviewing available technologies
and vendors, NNDS decided on
Microsoft Dynamics GP for financial
management. Easing integration, the
organization then decided to take
advantage of Microsoft Dynamics CRM
as the key component to its education
enablement technology. NNDS
leadership saw that Microsoft Dynamics
CRM offered robust out-of-the-box
functionality and an extensive set of
development tools to support and
manage many different types of
relationships.
“With Microsoft
Dynamics CRM,
Microsoft Dynamics GP,
and Backpack, we deliver
a repeatable,
dependable solution that
can support PA Cyber
and all NNDS member
schools, current and
future, for years to
come.”
Brett Geibel, Executive Consultant,
National Network of Digital Schools

3. Flexible Platform
Treating Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a
platform, NNDS created a solution called
“Backpack” with all the capabilities NNDS
wanted to provide to students, families,
and schools. Built on the xRM application
development framework of Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, Backpack offers
comprehensive educational management
and delivery tools for teachers,
administrative staff, students, and
families. The solution comprises two
components: Backpack Community and
Backpack SIS. Backpack SIS is an
information management system with a
broad set of capabilities to enable
educational services. The system helps to
facilitate:
 Enrollment, registration, and master
scheduling.
 Course and class management.
 Attendance and seating charts.
 Grade book tasks.
 Health records management.
 Discipline and incident reporting.
 Special education.
 Team and club tracking.
 Bus route management.
 School and state reporting.
 Notification and alert subscriptions.
“Online schools need an effective,
reliable SIS that can easily be delivered
and customized over the web. Microsoft
Dynamics CRM provided us with all the
tools and resources to develop such an
SIS with great efficiency,” says Scott Orr,
Chief Architect at NNDS. “Even better,
the graphical user interface in Microsoft
Dynamics CRM looks like Microsoft
Outlook, which accelerates adoption. We
can make the best use of our skills as
Microsoft .NET developers to extend the
solution to the exact needs of online
schools.”
The Backpack Community component of
Backpack provides a secure, immediate
social-networking experience that aligns
with educational objectives. By using
Backpack Community, students can view
their schedules and how they are doing
in courses, access course profile pages,
create blogs, “friend” each other, join
clubs and teams, and more. Backpack
Community is also of value to parents
because it enables them to review
students’ coursework and performance.
Although PA Cyber has not yet
implemented the Backpack Community
functionality, Granito notes, “Parents are
going to be thrilled. Because Backpack is
based on Microsoft technology, it works
with our applications, so we can improve
the customer experience by providing
them all their information in one place.”
Brett Geibel, Executive Consultant at
NNDS, adds, “The Backpack solution is
reinforcing the concept of community
Backpack Community brings
social-networking capabilities to
online education.

4. that we work hard to establish through
our online schools.”
Integrated Financial Management
Through Backpack Community, students
can also access an online store to pay
fees and make purchases. These activities
connect with the inventory management
functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
which in turn updates the financial-
management records in Microsoft
Dynamics GP.
In addition, when students register for
courses over the web, integration with
Microsoft Dynamics CRM associates
those courses with student accounts and
creates a sales order in Microsoft
Dynamics GP, which then notifies NNDS
warehouse staff which materials to ship
to the student.
Reflecting on the solution’s financial-
management capabilities, Geibel says, “It
was extremely important to us that we
could meet the intense auditing
requirements of public schools, and we
were able to customize Microsoft
Dynamics GP to do exactly that. For
example, if we need to provide
information on what happened with
computers and equipment we furnish to
the schools, it’s a small task to ascertain
where we shipped items, whether any of
them were returned to us, and if we
shipped them elsewhere.”
Responsive Customer Service
NNDS also uses Microsoft Dynamics
CRM at its customer service desk. About
35 support professionals help students,
family members, teachers, and
administrators from the many NNDS
member schools with setting up and
operating their computers, working with
the Backpack solution, and other
concerns. By using Microsoft Dynamics
CRM, service team members can
immediately access individual and
institutional accounts, review their
histories and past communications, and
render well-informed assistance.
Benefits
For PA Cyber and NNDS, building its SIS
based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM has
proven to be the right move to help
meet the growing demand for excellent
online education. Says Geibel, “Because
of the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics
CRM, we are able to keep up with the
evolving needs of the member schools
and continue to support the best
educational experience possible.”
Enable High-Quality Education for
Students Everywhere
With a streamlined infrastructure
consisting of Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Backpack,
NNDS delivers excellent educational
services, providing students and schools
with the best possible results from an
enriched educational experience. With
the technology first implemented for PA
Cyber and successfully brought to NNDS
member schools, Dr. Trombetta and his
colleagues continue to build on the
achievements that outstanding online
education is capable of, making PA
Cyber’s successful experience available to
a worldwide community of students,
families, and teachers. Says Dr.
Trombetta, “As the number of online
schools grows and competition
increases, we have to continue to
increase our quality to keep NNDS vital.
By moving away from traditional
education and other online-education
models, we aim to offer more active
engagement, more interaction, and more
commitment from the students so that
they take responsibility for their learning.

5. We implemented technology to that end,
and it serves us well.”
Accelerate Solution Development
By developing Backpack from within
Microsoft Dynamics CRM as opposed to
starting from scratch, Orr and his
developer team delivered a powerful SIS
in minimal time. Says Orr, “To create a
solution that would provide us even with
the more basic capabilities of Backpack
would have been a major effort and
taken a very long time. We based our
development on Microsoft Dynamics
CRM and the tools that came with it and
incorporated into our work all of the
research and development that Microsoft
made available in the product. In this
way, we were able to shorten the
development time by at least three years,
but probably more.”
Scale with Growth
With the growth of PA Cyber and the
participation of many more online
schools in NNDS, both the integrated
solution of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and
Microsoft Dynamics GP that powers PA
Cyber and NNDS operations and the
Backpack solution have easily kept up
with increasing workloads and a wide
variety of usage scenarios. Since its
founding in 2005, NNDS has extended to
support more than 50,000 students and
includes partner schools from 15 states
and international locations. PA Cyber
expects to grow from today’s 9,200
students to 15,000 over the next five
years—growth that Microsoft Dynamics
CRM, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and
Backpack will be able to support. Says
Geibel, “With Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Backpack,
we deliver a repeatable, dependable
solution that can support PA Cyber and
all NNDS member schools, current and
future, for years to come.”
“We based our
development on
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
and the tools that came
with it…. In this way, we
were able to shorten the
development time by at
least three years, but
probably more.”
Scott Orr, Chief Architect,
National Network of Digital Schools

6. Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of
integrated, adaptable business
management solutions that enables you
and your people to make business
decisions with greater confidence.
Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
Microsoft software such as Microsoft
Office, which means less of a learning
curve for your people, so they can get up
and running quickly and focus on what’s
most important. And because it is from
Microsoft, it easily works with the
systems that your company already has
implemented. By automating and
streamlining financial, customer
relationship, and supply chain processes,
Microsoft Dynamics brings together
people, processes, and technologies,
increasing the productivity and
effectiveness of your business, and
helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the
Microsoft Sales Information Center at
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the
Microsoft Canada Information Centre
at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the
United States and Canada who are
deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach
Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD)
services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the
50 United States and Canada, please
contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.
To access information using the World
Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information PA Cyber
products and services, call (888) 722-
9237 or visit the website at:
www.pacyber.org
For more information about National
Network of Digital Schools products
and services, call (866) 990-6637 or
visit the website at:
www.nndsonline.org
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published August 2010
Software and Services
 Microsoft Dynamics
− Microsoft Dynamics CRM
− Microsoft Dynamics GP