The Hindu Business Line : Counting on God

IN the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the waters. Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day." (The Bible)

When he continued with the task of creating the universe and all its inhabitants in a matter of just six days, God did not need a database to help him. But we mortals can't do without computers these days. Even in service to God, software comes in pretty handy.

That's what the St George's Jacobite Syrian Church in Ernakulam has discovered. The Church, located on the outskirts of the city, has streamlined its operations by implementing a software package called `ParishManager,' developed by the Kochi-based Team e-biz Ltd.

The church felt the need for a software tool because of the same issues that confront today's corporates: huge volumes of data, multiple streams of operations, and cumbersome processes.

"The church has about 1,800 to 2,000 families under it, needs to register births, deaths, marriages, baptisms, etc, and it runs hospitals, schools and many other services. To manage all these, we decided about a year ago to go for software on an experimental basis," says P.A. David, Manager of the church.

What makes handling all this data a complex affair is the manner in which a church functions. For instance, every year, elections are conducted to appoint trustees and other officials, and members have to fulfil certain criteria to run for the elections, as well as to cast their votes.

"Those who haven't made at least one confession in a year are not eligible to be candidates. Or those who have arrears due to the parish cannot also contest," David explains.

Besides, the church has to issue certificates on births, deaths and baptism. While it was a lengthy process in the past to find data for such purposes, especially when the details can date back to years, information is now available at the click of a mouse.

ParishManager was developed on the Microsoft .Net platform on the C# language. It can run on systems powered by Intel Celeron (and more powerful processors) with normal features such as 256 MB RAM and 40 GB hard disk. And it has English and Malayalam language capabilities.

ParishManager has multiple modules to incorporate various aspects of the church's functions. In the parish module, data can be uploaded into sections such as Membership, Baptism, Marriage, Funeral, Cemetery and Schedule.

In the general module, sections are divided as Booking, Reminders, Accounts, Payroll, etc. The Membership module will provide information pertaining to family register, family division, transfer of membership inside and outside the parish, termination and collection of fee, etc.

The Baptism module will record details of baptisms performed. Anautomatic updating of the membership register is also possible when a member's child is baptised.

The Marriage module will record details of marriages performed at the church, and accordingly update membership details.

Funeral details of members and non-members will be included in the Funeral module. The software also has provision to configure the cemetery and the cellars, and their layouts too.

Once the data entry is done, the software can get information pertaining to members quickly. If a child is born in a particular family and that information is uploaded into the system, it will automatically get updated in the Membership module. Similarly, if a death occurs, details will get updated in the system.

"Now we can get any information about a family from the system. In the past, we had to refer to so many books to obtain the same data," David says. This means the church can now issue certificates related to births, baptisms and deaths in no time. Once more data is uploaded, the church plans to enhance the software's use.

Team e-biz claims that one of the main characteristics of the software is its ability to allow the user to switch between English and Malayalam instantly. Malayalam keyboard layouts such as phonetic, inscript, typewriter and modular have been incorporated in ParishManager. A keyboard tutor helps users to get familiar with various layouts.

Also, ParishManager can be customised so that various denominations of churches can use it. Team e-biz has started marketing it and is in the process of implementing it in more churches. The Malayalam version costs around Rs 20,000 for a single user licence, while the English version is likely to cost less.

vipin@thehindu.co.in

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