You Can’t Make Things Work
on Good Intentions Alone.
But they’re a pretty good place to start.
Start at the End. Work Back From There.
You can do anything. Please don’t try to do everything.
Your students certainly don’t care where Recruitment ends and Admissions begins.
They don’t care that your SRS is now version 17.3, your APIs use OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens with secrets safely tucked away in Azure Key Vault, or that Dave finally found a workaround for the previous workaround that broke just in time for Clearing.
They just know when something works, and when it doesn’t.
You’ll never run out of things to do.
When everything on your list is a must. When you find a can of worms inside a can of worms. When your work in Advancement breaks Admissions. Or when you’ve spent so long trying to do something that you forgot why you were doing it in the first place.
This. This is where we come in.
Here’s what we do.
We’ve grouped our services into eight areas because apparently websites need some sort of a structure. Fair enough.
The lines aren’t fixed. Problems overlap. Projects wander. And sometimes what you need doesn’t fit neatly into any box at all.
Looking for something specific? Jump straight there. Otherwise, keep scrolling. You might find something you didn’t know you needed.
Recruitment
Find the right students. Then give them a reason to choose you.
Take 100 prospects and you’ll find 100 different motivations, priorities and concerns. Good. Personal doesn’t have to mean one-to-one. Technology makes that manageable.
Create experiences worth engaging with. Messages worth reading. Events worth taking part in. Stir their curiosity. Spark their interest. Make them feel like they belong before they’ve even arrived.
Then pay attention. By the time they apply, you should know them well enough to stop calling them a lead. Do more of what works. Less of what doesn’t.
Admissions
They’ve made a big decision. Don’t make them regret it.
Excitement. Doubt. Stress. An offer. Conditions. Documents. Transcripts. Translations. Deadlines. Fees. Funding. Scholarships. Loans. More excitement. More doubt. A few days can feel like weeks when your future is sitting in someone’s inbox.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the inbox, things aren’t exactly calm either. Make someone’s day. Shatter someone’s dream. Repeat. All while wrestling with siloed systems, outdated processes and a spreadsheet with 14 tabs that nobody quite remembers creating.
We can’t take the emotion out of Admissions. But we can take out the chaos.
Students
One university. Thousands of moving parts.
A lecture in the wrong room. A module change gone wrong. A dissertation reaching the wrong office. Dave from Finance assigned to teach French. Again.
300 students rocking up to a room that accommodates 30. One student appearing twice. Another apparently not existing at all. Attendance at 137%.
Three reports. Five different figures. And nobody entirely sure how many students actually joined the university.
Can it all be prevented? Probably not. Can it be made better? Absolutely yes.
Wellbeing
Sometimes the Hardest Thing to Ask for Is Help.
Not everyone knows who to talk to. Not everyone knows what to say. And not everyone who needs support will ask for it. Sometimes being there starts with noticing. Sometimes it starts with listening. Sometimes it simply means making it easier to take the first step.
Support needs to be there when it matters, handle sensitive information with care and recognise that not every challenge is visible. Because giving everyone an equal chance doesn’t mean treating everyone exactly the same.
Advancement
The alumni journey started years ago.
Don’t let years of getting to know someone turn into a monthly newsletter. People move. Priorities change. Life happens. And somewhere along the way, it’s surprisingly easy to lose each other.
So don’t. Keep talking. Be there when they need you. Open doors. Make introductions. Anticipate what might help. And don’t let all those brilliant alumni benefits become the university’s best-kept secret.
Graduation might just be when they need you most. Do your part. And when you need something from them, they may just do theirs. Give first. Ask later. Do it right and perhaps you won’t need to ask at all.
Registry
The administrative backbone of the student lifecycle.
The university runs on things most people never see.
When Registry works brilliantly, most people probably don’t notice it at all. Yet there’s no Admissions without Registry. No Students. No Advancement. Behind the scenes, Registry is where some of the university’s least glamorous yet most important work happens – keeping everything ticking.
Want Registry involved? They’ll be there. Don’t want Registry involved? They’ll still be there. You just may not realise it yet. Registry isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Don’t work around them. Work with them.
Operations
Keeping the lights on. Sometimes literally.
Operations is where all the glorious institutional plumbing lives that doesn’t fit neatly into the student lifecycle boxes.
Buildings open. Bills get paid. ID cards work. Systems talk to each other. Meeting rooms can be booked without negotiating a ceasefire. People get what they need. Things happen when they’re supposed to happen.
New starters can actually start. Leavers actually leave. Finance knows what it paid for. HR knows who works here. IT knows what they should have access to. And Procurement doesn’t take so long buying the latest technology that it becomes legacy before the contract is signed.
Partnerships
It’s complicated.
Every university has relationships. Employers. Schools. Agents. Government. Charities. Suppliers. Research partners. Other universities. Sometimes the same organisation is several of those things at once.
But you don’t have a relationship with an organisation. You have relationships with people. People change roles. People change jobs. People leave. Your people do too.
And there’s usually a reason you know each other. A contract. An agreement. A referral. A placement. A student. An invoice. An opportunity. Sometimes all of the above. Keeping track of who you know is hard enough. Remembering why you know them is harder.
When people move on, the relationship shouldn’t leave with them.
Still Here? Something Must Need Changing.
You could keep scrolling, or we can talk about it.
Tell us what’s working, what’s not and what keeps getting pushed into tomorrow. What everyone knows is a problem, but nobody quite knows how to fix. What’s stopping you from making the big leap forward.
You don’t need a perfect brief. We don’t need all the answers. Finding them is part of the job. There’s no magic formula, but understanding the problem is a pretty good place to start.
Let’s talk, shall we?