Universities & Colleges Information Systems Association
Best practice in IT for the Higher and Further Education Sectors
The Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) is a membership association that promotes and supports best practice in the procurement and use of IT in this sector.
A particular characteristic of the Association is that, as well as supporting a diverse and highly active membership portfolio, it also manages a large programme of events. These events take place, on average, weekly and range from one-day seminars to large-scale national conferences and exhibitions.
Pangaea Consulting with the Aptify® software was chosen to underpin UCISA's own IT development as, unusually for software in this sector, it could handle both membership and the events management that are an essential part of its work.
Key decision criteria were the affordability of the system and its capacity for development in the face of changing or growing needs.
The Aptify® system was implemented in just over six weeks and has been adapted successfully to meet UCISA's specific way of working.
Executive Secretary Peter Tinson has endorsed both the choice of software and the working relationship with Pangaea. “We find Pangaea staff and management to be very responsive to us and, whatever the challenge, there is never a delay in providing a solution. An added benefit is that both of us feel we can express ourselves openly in the interests of the project's success and thus we maintain the pace of any emerging development.”
“Given our role in supporting others' IT best practice, we have to keep abreast of a fast-changing technology sector and maintain our ability to adapt as new requirements evolve within a dynamic membership base. Software flexibility is an important part of that requirement, which is why we appreciate the role Pangaea plays in supporting us.”
Please contact us or download here, if you would like a full in depth case study for UCISA, so that you can see the full extent of the synergy we achieved by working together.
The British Heart Foundation
Aptify® means faster, better co-ordinated management of events
The British Heart Foundation (BHF), through using Aptify®, a new software system from Pangaea Consulting, has been able substantially to increase its fundraising capacity across its many events and activities.
Aptify® is configured to match the precise needs of an organisation and, in BHF´s case, has been applied particularly to the management of national and international events. These include such high profile events as The London Marathon and the London to Brighton Bike Ride with its 27,000 cyclists.
“It freed up time and effort, organising things was much quicker and we are now in a position to take on more events without any increase in staff”, said events project manager Nancy Prior.
The reason for this productivity increase was the common wish within the charity that it should consolidate a disparate set of databases. This enables it to capitalise on the opportunity to treat a donor or supporter as an asset to the whole organisation, whereas, in the past, such contacts were ‘owned’ by individual teams. It in effect means that BHF can manage the whole of a ‘supporter journey’.
A particular benefit to BHF has been Pangaea´s ability to produce the results as specified. “In my experience, the software services provided by Pangaea have been consistently delivered on time and within budget”, said Khurram Khwaja, Business Analyst/Change Manager.
British Heart Foundation now expects continuing expansion of its events and activities and, in the interests of constantly raising funds for heart disease prevention, to increase the lifetime value of all its many supporters.
Please contact us or download here, if you would like a full in depth case study for the BHF. Explore how Pangaea have contributed to the success of events that really make a difference.
Elim Pentecostal Church
500 Elim churches benefit from new IT infrastructure
The Elim Pentecostal Church, a top 50 charity with activities in 75 countries, has used Pangaea Consulting to introduce new IT systems in support of a far reaching change programme. Contrary to research figures that overall show decreasing church attendance in the UK, Elim has continued to enjoy continuing growth in congregations, youth activity, evangelism and outreach.
The reasons for choosing Pangaea were twofold: the use of a modular and highly adaptable software suite, Aptify and a relationship of trust that had been built with Pangaea´s MD twenty years previously.
“We knew from years ago that in Hanif Patel, we would have someone who understood and could adapt a commercial package to our needs. His approach, and that of his company, is to fit software to genuine commercial needs and not, as with the case of too many software vendors, fit commercial needs to the software”
“The supplier we wanted to work with is one who has empathy and is willing to come to terms with what we want. Pangaea has always adopted a ‘customer first’ approach”.
“The basis of our requirement was to unify data held on different systems and for different purposes into a fully-integrated set of applications where all relevant data is available to all who need it, when they need it. It was also to introduce systems where none had been used previously”.
Please contact us or download here, if you would like a full in depth case study for Elim, see what we have acheived with them.
