The Client

Empowering Learning provides education services. The business is part of a group of three brands that provide support for the education sector. These are:

– Empowering Learning – a company focusing on teacher recruitment.

– Timeplan Education – one of the oldest teaching recruitment companies in the country with 30 years in the industry.

– Teamteach Training – a provider of special needs and behavioural management systems for schools.

Their growth story began in 2017 when Graphite Capital Private Equity backed a management buy-in. The mandate was to become one of the largest education services businesses in the country. From there the group acquired Timeplan and then Teamteach.

The Brief

Empowering Learning had expanded from just a handful of employees in 2017 to over 150 staff by the end of 2018. The rate of employee growth was outrunning IT support resource. The firm needed additional IT Support which would reduce the quantity of IT problems being reported. It also wanted to refocus its internal IT resource on proactive business improvement and innovation rather than front line problem resolution. It wanted to mature its processes and systems to ensure strategic, sustainable future growth. The business had to be able to scale up quickly as it grew.

Hiring internally would have been time consuming and expensive. They needed to add users and systems flexibly and efficiently to facilitate smooth growth. First impressions are important. IT plays a big part in a prospective employee’s experience. Empowering Learning insisted on working with a company whose capabilities would make sure that every first experience was positive.

Our Approach

Because Empowering Learning had scaled so fast, our top priority was to improve recruitment productivity. This meant identifying where productivity gains could be made quickly and delivering the right solutions with a minimal impact on their resources.

We prioritised improvements within the firm’s internal processes and the end user support experience. This decision wasn’t just about efficiency. Great tech at work is expected by today’s workers. If you don’t provide it, they’ll go and work for someone that does. We had to help Empowering Learning deliver a brilliant experience to the people that matter to them.

Then, we had to make them safe and resilient. By understanding – in detail – how Empowering Learning could deliver “normal service” when the worst happens, we have helped to make sure their candidates and customers always receive the firm’s first class service.

The Solutions We Delivered

• Productivity for recruitment – we created dependable and accessible systems so that staff could be effective and responsive from 7am. This means the school can contact supply teachers before the day starts and secure emergency supply teacher cover.
• Improved operational efficiency – we identified and tackled the background issues that were causing the high volume of IT helpdesk tickets. As a result of reducing the total number of tickets raised, less resource is now required to resolve issues allowing Empowering Learning to save ongoing Managed IT costs with us.
• Switch in focus of IT Resource – The Head of IT has been able to shift focus from first line ticket issues such as password resets and processing new employees, to more strategic priorities such as security systems and CRM enhancements.
• Predictable Scalability – Our Managed IT per-user-pricing means that as Empowering Learning continues to grow, they can budget, plan and easily predict what their support spend will be. They can rest assured they have access to a team of highly skilled experts which will grow as they grow.
• Improved decision making – Managed IT has enabled the business to make decisions based on real data. It has helped Empowering Learning identify where users need training versus where there are genuine technology problems. Blue Saffron has delivered these benefits by giving them data aggregation and insight tools that provide insights that inform good business decisions.
• Business Continuity – IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is an industry framework of best practices for delivering IT services which has been developed by the UK Government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency. We have introduced ITIL best practice to Empowering Learning’s IT systems by applying rigor to the business environment and providing structure to back up their support environment.

Significant Improvements

Empowering Learning are now realising the benefits of working with Blue Saffron. They are running services more efficiently and have a more robust IT platform to build the business on. They can now budget, plan and predict what their support spend will be. They have access to a team of highly skilled experts which will grow as the company grows and their internal team has been freed to focus on innovating and developing IT solutions for major strategic challenges.

Empowering Learning have saved significant amounts of time and money by adopting Blue Saffron’s approach. We’re helping the business to run more efficiently by applying processes that improve productivity.

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