The Customer

Founded in 1843, Swindon College prepares students for employment or further study with a wide range of full- and part-time courses. Adults and undergraduates alike learn from professional faculty in educational facilities purpose-built for their field. Industry-standard facilities include Engineering, Construction, Hospitality and Catering, Hairdressing, Beauty, and Art and Design.

The Challenges

Swindon College came to Xledger in 2015, looking to overcome challenges of their existing on-premise ERP. Challenges faced included:

  • On-premise solution with archaic elements
  • Unfeasible development costs of their current provider
  • The need to be browser based and on the web
  • A lack of WIFI always-on connection (with backups) for continuity of service
  • Difficult workflow processes with IT specialists needed to work the system
  • Too many manual tasks within the finance team
  • An inflexible system with custom installs
  • An old fashioned interface

The Approach

Xledger provided Swindon FE college with a cost-effective platform, no monthly tie-in and quarterly vendor-side updates. The approach used to on-board included:

  • One consistent account manager
  • A strong migration plan to deliver on
  • An Xledger consultant and PM leading on implementation

“We are capable and in control of our own product, whereas with the previous system we were not,” reports Swindon College accountant Jim Bridgeman. “I don’t have to ask a specialist in IT to extract me data I can’t drill down into or rely on an SQL specialist to do things for me. Xledger is great for speed of use and much easier to get around than previous systems. The whole breadcrumb user navigation experience is a lot better too.”

The Solution

In Xledger, Swindon found true cloud and a consistent (end-end) customer journey with:

  • Deployed integrated system in the cloud
  • Agile forecasting system with easy to use navigation
  • Automated banking and accounting functions
  • Additional functionality for planning
  • Support and development with the Xledger team
  • Project accounting functionality
  • Reporting and analytics in real-time
  • A system staff all can use easily

“Key to us at the end of the day was success of the implementation process and delivery of the product, which you did really well,” Bridgeman adds.