Case Study: The University of Bristol, Bristol Medical School
This blog post will provide an in-depth look at how SkillsForge delivered a world-class automated event management system for the Bristol Medical School at the University of Bristol. The Bristol Medical School is a leading centre for collaborative and multi-disciplinary research, with a mission to deliver excellent research and teaching.
The problem space
Bristol Medical School provides Short Courses in Population Health Sciences for students and staff at the University of Bristol. The school runs a series of fantastic short courses over the course of the academic year. These short courses are extremely popular and as such, the team at the Bristol Medical School were processing a lot of booking requests, payment details and places manually. In addition to this, the Medical School provides discounted places for groups of people at the institution, ensuring that everybody has the opportunity to get the training that they need to succeed.
The team at the Bristol Medical School were looking for an automated system to help enable them by managing bookings, orders and waiting lists.
Through early analysis and user interviews we discovered that, due to the existing processes, users had difficulty understanding their discount allocation and therefore the training that they could receive.
The SkillsForge Solution
Through a close collaboration with members of the Short Course team at the University of Bristol's Medical School, together, we delivered a solution allowing people to easily book Short Courses.
Early development
As with any new functionality we work on, we began by exploring the requirements of the project and uncovering user needs by working with the Medical School to organise stakeholder interviews as well as focus groups. Our aim is to ensure that we deliver a product that works for everyone that needs to use it.
With a series of prioritised outcomes identified, the team at SkillsForge began work to define requirements and outcomes that would be needed for the project to be a success. Through fortnightly calls with the team at the Medical School we built an understanding of existing processes and identified areas for improvement.
Early attempts to understand how these changes would affect the current SkillsForge product
To ensure that we were creating a product that would meet the need of users, we made an interactive prototype to demonstrate exactly how SkillsForge and it's new features would work. This prototype allowed people to click through and, exactly as you would with the end product, book onto an event and complete your order. This tangible, interactive approach allowed people an insight and understanding as to how the SkillsForge product would work and provided us with insightful feedback, sparking discussions and revealing criteria missed during discussions.
The basket screen from our prototypes
New technologies
During this project, the team at SkillsForge worked tirelessly to improve the core product. Not only did the team deliver a product meeting the institution's needs, we also made considerable improvements and iterated upon our:
- Transactions manager, we upgraded this to a newer technology ensuring that interactions with the system are as quick as possible.
- Database tooling, providing SkillsForge with greater ability to make use of data.
- Front-end technologies, using modern reusable web components to deliver consistent, simple points of interaction across our products.
The final product
Working with the team at Bristol Medical School, SkillsForge was able to successfully deliver an automated course booking system for the beginning of the Medical School's Short Course programme in January 2021.
This brand new product includes functionality that allows for:
- Users to book multiple courses with brand new basket and checkout functionality
- User vouchers and discounts, enabling people to access the training and teaching that they need.
- An overview of payments due, providing institutions with insights as to when they can expect income.
- A powerful administrative tool to make changes to existing orders and to record payments and their history.
This functionality is in addition to our existing Training Management System product, which includes automated course management, skills assessments as well as reporting and statistics.
A testament to the design and product created came 30 seconds after the launch of the product, as a user was able to book themselves onto a course and checkout in that short period of time. Previously, this process spanned days. SkillsForge allows users to independently book themselves on courses and automates the process. Within an hour and a half of launching, SkillsForge had effortlessly processed 262 orders, allowing people to access the teaching that they needed.
Summary
After signing the University of Bristol as a customer, SkillsForge provided a collaborative and consultative approach to developing new functionality capable of automating hundreds of orders, allowing people to access the teaching that they need to succeed.
In addition to the world class leading offering that SkillsForge offers, we are delighted with the development of this advanced Training Management System functionality which is able to automate and process courses with payments and discounts.
SkillsForge CEO Gary Fawcett said:
Gary's quote here.
To find out more about SkillsForge, view our functionality or get in touch with us.