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Nearly 6 million adults in the UK have no qualifications and 7 million lack basic skills in literacy or numeracy. The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) was formed in 2001 to take over responsibility for funding and planning training and higher education (excluding universities) for all over-16s in England.
The challenge
The Learning and Skills Council's initial challenge was to make the provision of training and education more consistent and to control the allocation and use of funds. It also had to create a new organisation, merging different cultures, offices, personnel, processes and systems. In practice, this meant unifying existing systems, implementing efficient systems for data collection, funding and quality control, while still supporting existing processes.
The solution
The first priority was continuity of the main business objectives, whilst integrating different processes, systems and technologies. Xansa worked with the LSC to develop, launch and support business critical systems for data collection, funding allocation, data analysis and reporting and quality control. Xansa improved the business-critical requirement by further developing it into an online service, including the provision of a pioneering human resources intranet portal serving over 4000 employees. Education and training providers can now enter data with web-based forms which include validation rules to improve the quality of data.
Xansa is also supporting the LSC in analysing data to make fundamental decisions on how to meet quality and learning objectives. Xansa has built and supports the funding allocation systems which the LSC uses to allocate up to £8 billion a year to colleges and employers. Systems have also been implemented to monitor colleges and other education providers for quality and achievement of objectives.
The benefit
Xansa's approach, based on partnership and flexibility, allows the LSC to understand the cost and time implications of the decisions it makes. The central programme support office is being delivered via a shared service, giving the LSC the benefits of an in-house IT department, with the cost and resource flexibility of an outsourced provider.
The success of the relationship has resulted in a new three-year contract which provides the Learning and Skills Council with guaranteed cost reduction and productivity improvements with savings of approximately 20% each year. This allows the council tremendous flexibility to adjust the IT resource pool according to demand, allowing cost control whilst maintaining a core resource with an in depth knowledge of the LSC's business and systems.
Today, with Xansa's support, The LSC is achieving its objective of increasing the number of learners and their levels of achievement. Over 4 million are already being helped to achieve their full potential.
"Xansa provided excellent project management and clearly demonstrated a good understanding of the business, a solutions driven approach and a commitment to delivery."
Andy Walton, HR Business Process Manager, Learning and Skills Council