The University of Sussex has selected the Agresso Campus Higher Education IT Platform to reduce costs, improve customer services and increase revenue. Sussex is ranked 8th in the UK, in the 2010 Times Higher Education magazine's World University Rankings. The selection of the Agresso Campus Platform will allow the University of Sussex to adapt its business model to the considerable change and funding challenges the sector faces in the UK.
The university has selected Finance, Projects, Procurement, Awards Management and CRM from the campus platform to modernise its approach to cost management and revenue generating opportunities. Agresso Projects, Award Management and CRM will also be used as a complete research solution.
At a time when controlling costs is so important to the university, the platform will empower business managers and executives to make the right spending decisions by allowing them to view and report upon real-time budgets and spend across departments and individual research projects. This visibility will benefit the university and its customers, allowing business managers to keep a tight rein on costs and research teams to better apportion grants and project budgets to achieve research aims. The platform will also improve services by breaking down silos and leveraging relevant existing information to benefit ongoing projects.
In the face of funding cuts the university has placed increasing importance on its revenue generating activities that include consultancy, research, testing and the use of its facilities. The stakeholders involved in selling and delivering these commercial activities, though often in completely separate teams, will have access to the same information on who is doing what and when for each funder, customer and opportunity. Transparency around opportunity management will help the university deploy the most suitable staff to each project and increase the opportunity for identifying new revenue generating opportunities.
UNIT4 will begin implementing the platform in November this year.
