King's College London finance success story
Preparing a prestigious university for their digital transformation.
Key outcomes
- Increased users of targeted expenses process by 32%
- Delivered a 25% time saving through in-app support
- Reduced admin approval time by 66%, despite a 53% user increase
“AppLearn have enhanced our software in a way I haven’t seen in any other organization.”
Mayur Odedra, Systems Manager at King’s College London
The objective
King’s College London is one of England’s most prestigious higher education institutions—regularly ranked as one of the top universities worldwide. After deciding they needed to improve engagement and training for Unit4 Business World, now known as Unit4 Enterprise Resource Planning, they set off looking to produce a video to do this.
The engagement with AppLearn actually started after being impressed with the videos we’d produced for their HR team, who were already using our digital adoption platform in Core HR.
During early conversations we uncovered the King’s team already had plenty of training and support materials, they were just housed in their own learning systems. This meant users had to switch contexts whenever they got stuck, and support teams often had to point users to where help could be found.
Instead of hoping to solve this with a video, they decided to improve their employee experience with our digital adoption platform’s in-app functionality and analytics. Starting with the expenses processes, we set about bringing more continuity and clarity to potentially 7,000 users of their Unit4 system.
"We saw a lot of potential in bringing everything in-app using the relevant functions of Adopt."
Mayur Odedra, Systems Manager at King’s College London
The solution
The King’s team already wanted to improve the engagement and training linked to Unit4, but wanted to do this with a video. Due to this, the first step of our engagement was to demonstrate how King’s could not only put together the comms as intended, but deliver it in a better way for their employees.
After showing proof of concept and getting initial buy in, we provided the King’s team with a skeletal overview of our functionality, a mockup of Adopt in their system and a configurable test environment. It was on seeing the ease of use and customizability of the platform that the project truly ramped up from a video to a DAP rollout.
For launch, we worked with King’s College London to ensure they had their own process, training and FAQ resources embedded in the software using our Split Screen module. We also used Trails and Tooltips to help King’s guide users through each field and sequence—ensuring both task completions and data accuracy.
"AppLearn were helpful enough to actually mockup the look of Adopt in our system. That gave us a real insight into the potential"
Mayur Odedra, Systems Manager at King’s College London
On seeing the potential, being able to quantify the impact soon became a critical issue for the project. Previously, King’s did what they could to measure success with default vendor data—chiefly focused on the kind of resources accessed and the number of views. However, this wasn’t centralized and only tracked clicks and outputs rather than outcomes and feedback.
Our analytics not only opened up more data and insight for the King’s team, but made it all available in one dashboard. On top of this, King’s made use of our Feedback module to embed user surveys into the Unit4 system, giving users the chance to have their say.
With this in place, King’s College London were using our in-app modules to not only enhance the system, but to be closer to their Unit4 users. For their systems team, the mix of qualitative and quantitative data was essential, as it not only captures the behavioral facts but the drivers behind them.
"We’ve now got all our training and FAQ resources embedded within Split Screen. We also use Tooltips to guide users through each field and sequence."
Mayur Odedra, Systems Manager at King’s College London
The outcomes
Our digital adoption platform has helped King’s College London to reduce Unit4 overheads linked to training, comms messages and maintenance windows. In fact, the Purchase to Pay support desk no longer have to answer specific support queries or gauge feelings and behaviors because Adopt fields and captures this for them.
Since launch, our platform has reduced admin time on expense approvals in Unit4 by 66%, despite a 53% user increase. It has also not only increased the users of targeted process by 32% and delivered a 25% time saving through in-app support, but enabled the King’s College London team to measure this.
"Throughout the lifecycle of the project AppLearn were incredibly helpful—from project plan and setup to ongoing support.”
Mayur Odedra, Systems Manager at King’s College London
For what started as a search for a video to improve employee engagement and training, our work together has ended up meaning so much more.
From an improved front and back-end user experience to greater communication and analytics, King’s are now closer than ever to their user base and are seeing the rewards. And we also still delivered the video that got this project in motion.
The systems team are now set up to introduce in-app support by themselves, with no need for code, but our relationship is far from over. From the ongoing support of our team to the new modules in our platform, we have ambitious plans to expand the coverage of Adopt into more Unit4 areas, including requisitions.
With our platform, King’s College London are now able to offer their employees an in-app assistance and education befitting of their status as a world-leading university.
"Adopt has not only given us an improvement to the employee experience, but brought us much, much closer to our users."
Mayur Odedra, Systems Manager at King’s College London
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