Leeds Metropolitan University issue equipment loans in 30 seconds with paperless, 100% accurate systemiden

Customer Profile

• Company: Leeds Metropolitan University
• Industry: Higher Education Establishment
• Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
• Employees: 3000+ employees and 37,000 students

"Resource Manager has significantly improved efficiency and accuracy within our loans department and has become a crucial part of our day to day processes"
Paul Brow, Principal Learning Support Officer, Media Services, LMU

Leeds Metropolitan University (LMU) is one of the largest universities in the UK, currently developing partnership opportunities to create a regional university network involving 14 partner colleges with over 400,000 students. Between them they are set to become a world-class regional university with worldwide horizons.

The Challenge

With a highly transactional loan equipment counters across 4 sites, operating a manual system to service over 37,000 students and up to 1,700 loans processed per week was labour intensive and prone to error. Resultantly, costly pieces of equipment were lost. With the universities’ ambitious growth and development, it was imperative that LMU looked to implement an IT based system that could handle this throughput and eliminate human error.

The Solution

With the increasing popularity of the loan equipment counter service (and the associated demands this created), LMU needed to implement a system that could handle the management of the loan equipment and the tracking of this equipment once loaned to a student. The Resource Manager application was implemented to fully replace the manual system and offer functionality not currently covered within the manual operations.

Resource Manager has been designed in conjunction with a number of universities that have a strong requirement to keep track of the equipment they hire to students and staff. Resource Manager administers and empowers these demanding environments where the volume of bookings is high. Resource Manager also applies strong controls to prevent items going missing and to manage the checking-in and out process.

The Benefits

For LMU, the benefits have been substantial. The system has proved easy for the staff to operate and facilitates rapid access to critical data. Previously, the issue of each loan would be time consuming and cumbersome in process, also allowing the introduction of error in the collection of data. Following the implementation of Resource Manager, loans can be issued in 20 to 30 seconds. Additional benefits are:

• Accurate stock records
• Seamless management of collection and returns process
• Immediately identifies if items are available
• Prevents double booking
• Simple, easy to use wizard allows users to make bookings themselves
• Keeps records of late or lost returns, including fine
• application if required
• Suitable for multi site management (system access via a web browser)
• Useful management reports

Why Claritas

Following an intensive evaluation process of two alternative software solutions, the Resource Manager application was identified as being a strong functional fit, and its ease of use negated an intensive implementation and training programme.

We have enjoyed a mutually rewarding relationship with LMU in streamlining the administrative processes and we are actively working with them to embrace new technologies to ensure that they deliver optimum services to both their existing and new students
Kevin Edwards, Sales Director, Claritas Solutions