One Digital Campus for a University Group
Overview
Our client wanted a student to experience one institution, not four faculties each with its own login, timetable and idea of who that student was.
Jessica Lauder
Chief Digital Officer / fairsystems
University IT estates accumulate rather than get designed. Each faculty solves its own problem, each solution brings its own identity store, and after a decade the institution cannot answer simple questions about its own students. fairsystems was engaged by a multi-campus university group to consolidate a fragmented digital estate into something a student could actually navigate.
The Client
Our client is a university group operating four campuses and a growing online programme, with roughly thirty thousand enrolled students. Faculties had procured independently for years, leaving overlapping virtual learning environments, three student record systems and no shared view of a student’s progress. Staff maintained the gaps manually, students re-entered the same information repeatedly, and the group’s leadership could not report on outcomes across the institution without a month of reconciliation.
Roadmap
1
Assess
fairsystems mapped the entire application estate against the student lifecycle, from enquiry through enrolment, teaching, assessment and alumni relations, identifying where each system claimed ownership of the same data. Our consultants ran structured sessions with faculty IT leads, registry, and students themselves, because the lived experience of the estate differed sharply from the architecture diagrams. We assessed each system on cost, contractual position, integration burden and whether it served a genuine faculty-specific need or merely a historical procurement decision, producing a defensible rationalisation case rather than an opinion.
2
Deliver
Our team designed a target architecture built on a single identity and a single authoritative student record, with faculty systems retained only where they served a real pedagogical difference. fairsystems specified an integration layer so remaining systems exchanged data through defined interfaces instead of overnight file transfers, and sequenced the migration so that no cohort changed systems mid-year. We ran the identity consolidation first, because single sign-on delivered visible benefit early and built the credibility the harder migrations required. Registry staff were embedded in the delivery team throughout to keep the data model honest.
3
Continue
fairsystems continues to advise the group's digital board as further systems reach contract renewal, applying the same rationalisation test rather than renewing by default. We support the annual review of the target architecture as the online programme grows, and help the client evaluate new procurement against the integration standards we established. Our consultants also mentor the group's newly formed enterprise architecture function so that the discipline survives inside the institution rather than depending on external review.
Solution Details
A fragmented estate is not a technology problem. It is an ownership problem.
Three student record systems with no authoritative source
Deliverable: fairsystems established a single authoritative student record and migrated faculties onto it in a sequence that never moved a cohort mid-year.
Students managing multiple logins across faculties
Deliverable: Our consultants delivered single sign-on across the estate first, giving students and staff a visible early win that carried the harder migrations.
Faculty systems duplicating central capability
Deliverable: We assessed every application against genuine pedagogical need versus historical procurement, producing a rationalisation case leadership could defend to faculties.
Overnight file transfers standing in for integration
Deliverable: fairsystems specified an integration layer with defined interfaces, replacing brittle batch transfers with contracts between systems.
Group reporting requiring weeks of manual reconciliation
Deliverable: Our team built group reporting directly on the authoritative record, so outcome reporting became a query rather than a reconciliation exercise.
No architectural gate on new procurement
Deliverable: We introduced integration and identity standards that new purchases must meet, closing the route by which the estate had fragmented in the first place.
Registry knowledge undocumented and held informally
Deliverable: fairsystems embedded registry staff in the delivery team, capturing the undocumented rules that governed the data before they were lost in migration.
No internal capability to sustain the architecture
Deliverable: Our consultants mentored the group's new enterprise architecture function, transferring the rationalisation discipline rather than leaving a dependency.
Result:
Students now sign in once and see one institution. The group reports on outcomes across all four campuses from a single authoritative record, turning a month of reconciliation into a query. Licence and support costs fell as duplicated systems were retired, and new procurement is gated against integration standards, so the estate no longer fragments faster than it can be consolidated. The client’s own architecture function now owns the target state, which is the outcome that determines whether the work holds.
0
Applications retired or consolidated
0
IT licensing cost reduction
0
Reduction in group reporting cycle
0
Manual data re-entry eliminated
0
Estate covered by single sign-on
Testimonials
How our services bring about success
Annika Nkosi
Lead Process Analyst
fairsystems’ team brought a unique combination of skills to our business assignment and was often sought out to tackle the most complex and integrated challenges.
Marie-Anne Badeaux
Programme Manager
fairsystems will challenge your thinking, provide you with alternative perspectives and, where appropriate, actively coach/mentor/advise you to generate and co-create solutions.
Justin J. Spratt
General Manager
Fairsystems consults impeccably to understand organizational needs and then brings innovative business relevant ideas and solutions to the table.
Mohamed Bin Naser
Chief Financial Officer
I am impressed with fairsystems’ team ability to grasp complex, accounting system problems and quickly find a simple, straightforward and affordable approach.
Ella-May Robinson
HR Manager
fairsystems has an incredible gift for making the complex appear simple and without being simplistic. It is a pleasure to work with them as they always deliver to an exceptionally high standard.
Jamal Aagha
Chief Executive Officer
There are some great companies in the media industry and the social space, but we have yet to see anyone take it to the level that we have with @fairsystems.
Allen Gibson
Operations Manager
The most valuable lesson we learned is that there are no shortcuts. Every minute we spent dissecting and learning was rewarded.
