Our stories
Digital transformation of the student journey
De Montfort University embraces a fully integrated digital solution to enhance the student journey.
Setting the scene
De Montfort University (DMU) is a large UK university with more than 22,000 students in the heart of Leicester. Universities across the UK, including DMU, are facing challenges over student application numbers and retention. To overcome these challenges, DMU wanted to improve the student, staff and academic experience, and so embarked on a significant transformation programme that would provide a properly integrated digital environment for all stages of the student journey.
How we helped
Our Midlands team, led by Justin Murphy and Neal Smith, across Risk Assurance and Consulting, worked in partnership with DMU to deploy an organisation-wide SAP solution supporting its finance, human resources, procurement, student management and marketing activities. The student system went live in September 2018 with further deployments through 2019.
SAP’s UK education template, Student Lifecycle Management, allows for remote working and 24/7 connectivity, and supports marketing and event management. There is also social media integration and the ability to identify and engage with potential students through the entire recruitment process.
Our involvement began with ‘critical friend’ support, providing initial health-checks to the programme sponsors. However, given the complex nature of the programme, DMU required significantly more help to ensure the programme would succeed, so our role expanded.
The expertise and support we provided covered programme management, programme governance, supplier management, testing strategy, management information and reporting, deployment planning, change management and data services.
“The implementation of SAP is an incredible achievement and offers a new digital foundation for our engagement with prospective and current students.
We are now completing a full calendar year of the student cycle and this has given us an excellent insight into the capabilities of the new SAP system. Our investment in SAP is underpinning our strategy of being more commercially effective and enhancing the experience of our staff, students and alumni.”
Making a difference
DMU has seen its highest student recruitment results during the clearing process – a success it credited in no small part to the use of the new technologies.
Technology transformation has proved particularly challenging for the higher education sector.
Justin Murphy, engagement partner for DMU, said: “Our work with DMU has helped put the university at the forefront of the sector by creating a fully integrated digital environment for its students and staff. The successful outcome at DMU could pave the way for other HE institutions to consider how to set up programmes for success.”