Commercial Applications

The Finance Systems team within Commercial Applications develops and maintains the University’s finance systems, including sending and receiving data to other systems.

The key finance system is Unit4, which has functionality for managing income, purchasing and payment of suppliers, staff expenses, budget management and research. Unit4 has a number of integrations with other systems, the main ones are:

• ESIS for student invoicing
• Proactis for marketplace purchasing, invoice capture and contract management
• Lloyds for banking and credit card facilities
• iTrent for payroll and user data
• Planet FM for workorders
• Web Shop and Web Payments for income

The Commercial Applications Systems team supports the administration of multiple systems that underpin various operational processes, which in turn facilitates and enables learning, teaching and research. Ensuring availability, integrity, and security of the University’s information assets is vital to the smooth running of these systems and services. We are a small, dedicated team, working closely with colleagues in People & Culture, Academic Section and Digital Innovation and Technology Services, while supporting up to 20,000 end users at the University and Student's Union.

Currently responsible for:

• iTrent
• HR Organiser
• People Manager
• Recruitment
• Business Objects
• LEAP
• OnBase
• External Examiner Nomination Portal
• DocuSign
• Qualtrics
• TDS - Attendance Card Swipes 
• Staff Desk Booking System (LibCal)

Commercial Applications Estates Systems covers around 70 systems used by Estates and Campus Services including accommodation, door security, sports systems, parking, food outlets, facilities management and maintenance.

We provide consultancy, project management and IT business partnering services for the purchase of new software, upgrades, the escalation of issues and liaison between IT and the business.

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) team manages the customisation and development of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online.

Dynamics 365 is primarily used to manage the marketing campaigns to prospective students, turning a prospective enquiry into an application for study, through to successful registration on that course. Dynamics 365 is used for query management by the Student Services Hub teams, recording any communication and contact with a student.

The CRM team assists with support and training to users so they can use Dynamics 365 successfully. We also make customisations to the system, providing the end user with the correct data screens, workflows, automations and collaborative working to achieve CRM, all within the guidelines of GDPR. We also create data integrations to ensure Dynamics provides up-to-date and accurate information.