Connecting strategy to execution.
As London's first integrated education group, LSBU's strategy, based on working in partnership to deliver exceptional outcomes for its students and staff, is matched by Simitive's culture of partnering with universities to bring innovative software and services to support their strategic imperatives.
In the same way that the LSBU Group Strategy, 'Connecting', connects learners to employers, communities to opportunity and research to real-world impact, Simitive connects strategy to execution, resources to activities and people to delivery.
At London South Bank University, workload allocation had grown organically over time. Different schools and departments had developed their own models and metrics, often held in Excel. This meant the approaches used and the extent to which they captured the breadth of an academic's activity varied widely across the university. While many of these systems worked well in isolation, there was no overarching model to integrate them into a single, reliable view.
At the same time, LSBU needed its workload allocation activity to reflect the evolving role of an academic. Beyond teaching, staff were contributing to research, enterprise, partnership work and mentoring. Many were also leading projects beyond their subject remit, shaped by shifting government priorities such as realising targets for regional regeneration
However, existing workload management models couldn't reflect this growing breadth of activity, leaving significant gaps in how effort was captured and understood. The University wanted to support talent development by linking workload planning and allocation to performance objectives, academic promotions and workforce transformation plans.
The University recognised that the lack of consistent, reliable data was limiting its ability to make informed, robust strategic decisions. Activities such as course and module rationalisation, workforce planning and future scenario modelling were harder to execute with confidence. It was also unable to streamline cross-university monitoring and reporting activities by integrating reliable workload data with other management systems.
Academic workload planning was a key strategic initiative, and we therefore adopted a partnership approach that combined internal knowledge with external expertise.
“For our purposes, WAMS as a Service is absolutely perfect. Simitive's managed service model offers excellent value for money and complements LSBU's strategy by providing specialist expertise and support where it delivers the greatest benefit. It significantly reduced the risk for our project and gave us all the features of WAMS we wanted – the transparency and being flexible enough to reflect our complicated framework. It was a win-win.”
More than technology: a cultural shift.
To the Provost and her team spearheading this transformation, it was clear from the start that a new workload allocation system was about so much more than technology; it was about achieving a cultural shift.
Activity started with an intensive programme of consultation and stakeholder engagement, focused on building trust, support and union agreement. This resulted in a set of guiding principles centred on consistency, fairness, transparency and recognition of the full breadth of academic work. A key priority for the system was ensuring every academic could clearly see their workload, review it and have a voice in how it was shaped.
At the point when LSBU had a draft set of workload tariffs but no specific technology solution in mind, the University commissioned Simitive consultants to conduct a tariff benchmarking study. During this engagement, Simitive proposed its Work Allocation Management Service (WAMS) as a Service solution to meet LSBU's objectives and overcome the issue of competing priorities for in-house IT support.
Previously unaware that Simitive could offer a managed service, the university team accelerated acceptance of the business case and contract, with the ambition of having WAMS as a Service up and running in just seven months, ready for the new academic year.
LSBU welcomed the flexibility of the WAMS platform, confident that the configuration of its Simitive workload model could deliver everything it wanted. This included:
- Workload information that's comprehensive, accurate and always up to date.
- Role categories appropriate to grade, remit and responsibilities.
- Data views by individual, module, course, School and College.
- Easy data comparison across groups of staff.
- 'Roll-over' and 'ghost planning' facilities.
- Alerts if an academic is allocated excessive hours.
- Reports on KPI-relevant metrics and the potential for links with BI dashboards.
- The ability to plan and model for the future and different scenarios.
“The Simitive team were amazing. Whenever I contacted them, they responded straight away. I will be eternally grateful for their help because they really walked through those early months with me. Over the course of the journey, we've had positive feedback from the unions, academics and senior managers and Simitive are always receptive to suggestions for product enhancement.”
A partnership proven early on
Implementing WAMS as a Service alongside the initial release of WAMS4 brought some challenges during onboarding, largely before the system was released to the wider academic community. But it was in working through these early hurdles that the strength of the partnership became clear.
Simitive's development team treated LSBU's objectives as their own. Team members responded quickly to issues, tirelessly worked extended hours to resolve bugs and were open and transparent about what was happening and why. Clear timelines for fixes helped LSBU manage expectations internally, while hands-on support, including assistance with data uploads, kept progress on track and ensured the University could meet its go-live deadline.
A first, standardised, university-wide view.
WAMS as a Service delivers LSBU's first standardised, University-wide view of academic workload planning and allocation. The model takes full account of the work profile expected of academic staff and enables LSBU to deliver the transparency and consistency in allocation it promised. All stakeholders are confident that it supports the fair and equitable distribution of academic workloads across the university.
LSBU senior managers are delighted to have up-to-date, accurate data at their fingertips. Their highly positive feedback centres on the system's overall accessibility, the ease of using the dashboards and reporting functions, and the value of the visibility it provides. There's a deep appreciation for how WAMS as a Service helps Heads of School balance and actively moderate workloads across the school.
The University is busy integrating other management, administration and reporting systems into WAMS, with work underway to connect HR and curriculum systems. LSBU is also using WAMS to generate data for industry reporting returns, such as TRAC and HESA.
At a strategic level, WAMS as a Service underpins the ambitions of LSBU Group's Strategy: Connecting. The 'technology' theme within Connecting is committed to harnessing innovation to transform what and how LSBU teaches, researches and delivers. WAMS as a Service helps ensure LSBU academic staff remain at the heart of technological innovation and significantly shifts the balance from administration to teaching.
For example, during the WAMS project, LSBU senior managers outlined their ideal top-line time distribution across the three buckets: teaching and learning; research and innovation; and administration, leadership and management. WAMS data revealed a disproportionate amount of time spent on administrative work, supporting the acceleration of projects to reduce academics' administrative burden.
It also supports the Connecting strategy's 'pathways' theme, providing swift and accurate workload modelling for courses the University wants to introduce or run out, so it can respond rapidly to market forces and provide integrated learning routes that lead to employment.
“WAMS as a Service has transformed our ability to understand, plan and deploy academic resource strategically. It gives us the visibility and insight needed to support fair workload allocation today while helping us model and shape the workforce we will need in the future. The partnership with Simitive has enabled us to turn a complex institutional challenge into a strategic asset that supports the ambitions of our Connecting strategy.”
“There have been many times when senior members of staff have said, 'We don't feel there is any way we could have done this a year ago'. And that's before we started using WAMS as a Service for scenario planning, future-proofing and workforce development-type activities, which is where its real strategic benefit comes in!”
- 01Recruit a member of the senior academic leadership to your transformation team to speak with credibility to academic staff.
- 02Invest time in gaining buy-in from academic staff and unions.
- 03Build in time for a testing phase before going live.
- 04Include future users in the testing phase to accurately model all likely scenarios.
Our experts are ready to talk through how WAMS as a Service can help you deliver workloads efficiently and fairly.
Contact usFrom insight to impact.
Software and services that help organisations see their work clearly, model what's possible, and make the decisions that shape what comes next. Simitive does not replace leadership judgement. It strengthens it.
WAMS
Capacity and workload
See how work is distributed across your people, where pressure is building and where capacity can be released. Plan fairly, transparently and at scale.
ABC
Cost and economics
Understand what work costs to deliver, how that changes with AI and structural shifts, and what it means for budgeting, investment and financial planning.
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Performance and development
Support better conversations about contribution, development and the workforce you will need. Streamline appraisals and lift engagement.
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Resource scheduling
Bring time, people and resource commitments into one plan. See who is delivering what, when and where, against the capacity you actually have.
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