Education:
Higher education
A mid-size university ran on spreadsheets and five disconnected tools, with no institutional view of anything. We deployed University Portal's academic suite over seven months, removing some 2,000 hours of manual admin a year.
- Client
- A mid-size university
- Sector
- Higher education
- Duration
- Approximately seven months end-to-end
The premise
Higher education runs on a patchwork: a spreadsheet for grades, another for attendance, a separate LMS, an email tool, a scheduling system, none of which talk to each other. Every gap between them is filled by a person re-keying data, and the institution as a whole has no single view of how a student is progressing. The administrative cost is enormous and entirely invisible until you add it up.
University Portal replaces the patchwork with one role-aware platform covering the full academic lifecycle. This case covers the rollout to a mid-size university.
How this engagement ran
From the problem to a system the team now runs themselves.
Spreadsheets, five tools, no institutional view
The university ran courses, exams, grading, attendance, scheduling, and enrollment across spreadsheets and five disconnected SaaS tools. Staff spent their days re-keying data between systems that did not connect, and no one had an institutional view of student progression because the data never lived in one place.
Theses, internships, and events were tracked in yet more separate documents, so the full academic lifecycle was scattered across the campus.
One role-aware platform for the full academic lifecycle
University Portal consolidated courses, exams, theses, internships, events, grading, and messaging into one platform with five role-tailored experiences (administrator, director, professor, student, staff) so each person saw exactly their part of the lifecycle.
Phase 1: Lifecycle and role mapping
Four weeks. Mapped the university's academic processes and the five roles to University Portal's model, and planned the migration off the spreadsheets and SaaS tools.
Phase 2: Academic suite rollout
Twelve weeks. Courses, exams, grading, theses, internships, and events deployed on one platform (NestJS and PostgreSQL on the back, role-tailored Next.js experiences on the front), replacing the disconnected tools.
Phase 3: Migration and onboarding
Twelve weeks. Data migrated off the spreadsheets per department, with each role onboarded to its own tailored experience and real-time messaging connecting them.
Two thousand hours a year of admin, removed
The university removed roughly 2,000 hours a year of manual administration: the re-keying between disconnected systems simply stopped, because the systems became one. For the first time the institution has a single view of student progression.
Five role-tailored experiences mean administrators, directors, professors, students, and staff each work from one platform rather than a personal pile of spreadsheets.
2,000 hrs/yr
of manual administration removed
5 → 1
disconnected tools to one platform
5 roles
tailored experiences from one codebase
Before and after
What changed.
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