SunGard Higher Education Lays Foundations for a 'Future Proofed' Unified Digital Campus at Royal Holloway

Royal Holloway, University of London, enjoys an international reputation for the highest quality teaching and research across the sciences, arts, and humanities. It is among the top ten research-led university institutions in the country and is often recognized for its Founder’s Building, one of the most spectacular university buildings in the world. Offi cially opened by Queen Victoria in 1886, Royal Holloway has continued to grow in size and status. Home to a vibrant community of 7,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from more than 120 countries, its spacious 135 acre campus provides an impressive range of modern academic and social facilities in Surrey, close to London.

Growth and fi erce competition for students have presented Royal Holloway with administrative and communications challenges. However, as an institution at the forefront of innovation, Royal Holloway has planned carefully for future growth by investing in software solutions aimed at improving the effi ciency of its administrative and communications systems throughout the campus.

In late 2003, Royal Holloway decided to review its system for electronic student record keeping, which had previously been handled by the Capita ‘HEMIS’ Student Record System. HEMIS had only been in place for eight years but support for this system was to be withdrawn by Capita and this prompted the institution to look for an alternative solution. As a result, a project board was formed with Dr. Phil McGeevor, the academic registrar at Royal Holloway, as the senior business user. A tendering process produced ten expressions of interest and seven complete tenders. After an extensive selection process, SunGard Higher Education’s Banner administrative suite emerged as the preferred solution.

Dr. McGeevor explained, “Our main strategic goal was to select a system that would serve our needs in the short, medium, and long term. We wanted to form a working relationship with a company that had the vision and resources to innovate in line with our own ambitions and plans for growth. We were already changing our communication with students through the use of uPortal and our technical team believed Luminis would give a secure foundation for such communication in the future. Banner’s workfl ow would give us the tools to support effi cient, cost effective administration. Finally, a site visit to another SunGard Higher Education customer located in Wales made an extremely favourable impression because it showed how Banner worked in an institution comparably sized with our own. The success at Bangor proved to be a crucial deciding factor for us.”

Having selected SunGard Higher Education, the project team planned the implementation around two fi xed deadlines: to run student admissions from September 2004, and to run enrolment and full student administration from September 2005. The fi rst of these deadlines was only eight months away.

About Royal Holloway

Royal Holloway is ranked among the UK’s top university institutions for both teaching and research. One of the larger colleges of the University of London, it is strong across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. Over 6,000 students work with internationally renowned scholars in 21 academic departments. As a cosmopolitan community, with students from 120 countries, Royal Holloway focuses on the support and development of the individual.

About SunGard SCT

SunGard SCT is a leading provider of software and services for higher education. SunGard SCT solutions help institutions create the Unified Digital Campus, an environment in which systems, individuals, and communities can interact seamlessly for learning, teaching, and administration. SunGard SCT supports more than 1,300 clients worldwide with administrative and academic solutions; portal, collaboration, and content management solutions; information access and business intelligence solutions; and integration solutions. For more information visit www.sunghardhe.com.

About SunGard

SunGard is a global leader in integrated software and processing solutions, primarily for financial services. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 20,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world’s 50 largest financial services companies. SunGard (NYSE:SDS) is a member of the S&P 500 and has annual revenue of $3 billion. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.