About Trinity College Cambridge
Trinity College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, strives to provide its members with a rewarding, richly resourced, and intellectually stimulating environment in which to pursue their education and research.
One of the largest colleges in Cambridge and Oxford, Trinity is a thriving international community of 750 undergraduates and 350 postgraduates, 190 Fellows and 350 full and part-time staff.
Founded by Henry VIII in 1546 through the amalgamation of two pre-existing institutions, King’s Hall and Michaelhouse, Trinity College has a rich historical legacy. Members of Trinity College have been awarded 34 Nobel Prizes, four Fields Medals, one Turing Award, and one Abel Prize.
The Challenge
What challenges and requirements did Trinity College Cambridge have that led them to consider a new system?
- To replace their Sage 200 system that was reaching end-of-life and soon to be unsupported.
- To have a single accounting system for the entire college which could integrate with college-specific applications.
- To have a real-time consolidated financial position across all areas of the college with significantly improved reporting functionality.
- To greatly reduce the amount of manual processing within the Finance team.
- To have one integrated student and fellow billing system.
- To have a system that could manage their 250+ different restricted and designated funds.
- To implement a Purchase Order system.
- To allow electronic workflows with email and mobile authorisation functionality.
- To support improved financial governance including procurement and expenses.
Finding the right partner
What reasons led Trinity College Cambridge to choosing Nolan Business Solutions for this project?
- Proven pedigree working with Oxbridge colleges for over a decade
- Custom-built solution specifically for Oxbridge Colleges
- 15 years’ experience moving businesses from on-premise finance solutions to cloud ERP
- Qualified technical resources
- 1,300+ active customers worldwide
- The second-ever UK NetSuite partner
The Solution
Trinity College Cambridge chose to replace their Sage 200 system with cloud-based ERP Oracle NetSuite combined with Nolan's college module Nolan Education Management.
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- Built for the cloud in 2007
- A powerful and mature finance system
- Real-time visibility and reporting into the college and its finances
- Ease of integration with systems commonly used by colleges
- Integrated reporting across all areas of the college both departmental and statutory
- Improved security with data encryption, two-factor authentication, role-based access control, regular security audits, advanced threat detection and data backup and recovery
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- Member management, student billing, collections and fund-based financial reporting
- Complete end-to-end view of members and college income
- Role-based dashboard
- Store records of awards, achievements, discipline procedures, visa information and more
- Secure and accurate sharing of sensitive information
- Bill members on an annual or term basis for fees and subscriptions
- Billing fully integrated with membership records
- Bill members for the wine consumed from the cellar
Results
Through Nolan Business Solutions' successful implementation of Oracle NetSuite and the Nolan Education Management module, Trinity College have transformed the way in which they operate in the following areas:
Enhanced Fund Analysis
Trinity College can now dynamically track movements by Fund Type, Cost Centre and Department and have these dynamically update based on the previous selection with some selections making other fields mandatory for comprehensive tracking and data capture.
Unified Reporting
Trinity College now have an all-in-one environment for fund reporting capable of cross-subsidiary insights:
- Fund reporting: all-in-one environment with day-to-day transactions being reflected that are presented to the Council.
- Cross Subsidiary: bringing together eleven subsidiaries into one entity for a holistic view of the entire organisation.
Implementing a Purchase Order Process
Previously, the absence of transparency and control over purchasing processes and pending invoices hindered the ability to forecast expenses and trace the origins of requests.
Nolan are implementing a robust purchase order approval workflow that extends to invoicing, leveraging NetSuite’s real-time approvals and reporting capabilities, enhancing visibility and financial governance.
They are also introducing 3-Way-Matching to further refine the procurement process, automating the verification of invoices against purchase orders and received goods, thereby expediting approvals and mitigating discrepancies.
Moving to the Cloud
Trinity's College's legacy system was out of support and no longer compatible with current desktop operating systems. By moving to the cloud, computers can be upgraded, be on supported hardware, meet security policies and governance and be less dependent on third-party developers and applications.
Expanding for the Future
The groundwork has been established for future expansions, including catering and student management systems. By integrating disparate activities into a unified platform, Trinity College is poised to harness cutting-edge features and streamline operations.
Leveraging Reporting Opportunities
With a solid foundation and cost analysis framework in place, Trinity College will be able to manipulate and display data in diverse formats that align with organisational needs.
This newfound capability within a single system will eliminate the dependency on external systems for data aggregation, fostering a more cohesive and efficient financial ecosystem.
Replaced Out-Of-Date Tech with WineApp
Accessed via a customer portal, a user-friendly solution has been created to allow Fellows to simply click through the items required and submit their order via email with both email confirmation and an option to generate the sales order off of the back of the request.
