The Problem

Located in The Philippines, My First Step was introduced to us in 2024 via a connection with one of our intermittent employees. At the time, My First Step - and much of the world - was still reeling from the pandemic, unable to purchase an expensive learning management system as a result of COVID’s impact on the economy. What they had instead were static, decentralized gradebooks and behavior management spreadsheets that would be updated manually. Emails being sent and grades being copied into centralized hubs had to be done one at a time, causing communication with the parents of the students to become a nightmarish task.

The Solution

xSoTec’s model focuses on transforming the existing framework of spreadsheets into a system that truly achieves the tasks that a dynamic and unique school demands. Beginning meetings with them weekly (and working around the 12 to 13 hour timezone difference that we had), we started by quickly adding our email messaging functionality to their gradebooks. Immediately, this allowed each teacher to send class-specific reports to the parents of the students with a push of a button, vastly improving the communication ability of the school.

Beginning more comprehensive updates in 2025, custom frameworks were added to their system, allowing their disparate spreadsheets to become something larger. With a centralized adminConsole for their system, providing an organized view of all of the spreadsheets in their system, alongside a report card hub where the grades from each gradebook were aggregated automatically, My First Step now could properly complete their tasks. They could send emails of full report cards easily, create changes and analyze all the gradebooks in a convenient manner, and create comprehensive report cards with all the specific criteria they needed integrated. In a matter of a couple of months, My First Step was upgraded from a school that was forced to complete repetitive data entry chores by hand to a school that had a system that was modeled to their exact needs.

How They're Doing Now

My First Step continues to work with xSoTec to iterate and refine their system. While the need to meet weekly isn’t necessary anymore, new ideas and quality of life changes continue to be requested and quickly integrated into their system. The flexibility of spreadsheets and our iterative approach allows us to adopt this approach, as updates aren’t time intensive or challenging to implement. It simply takes an email or a question during a semi-regular meeting, and in a matter of weeks, the update is made.

Specifically, since our rigorous development in 2025, we’ve since added automatic roster hub updates to gradebooks, a separate adviser-only emailing system, a comprehensive overview section to their attendance tracker, as well as several smaller tweaks to their grading approach and gradebook organization. My First Step is a prime example that partnering with xSoTec does not demand comprehensive brainstorming sessions every other workday - updates can be made intermittently, allowing staff to adjust to changes and think of new ideas as they see fit.