Glyndwr University in Wrexham has overcome resourcing challenges and recovered significant debt with the help of its accountancy software provider, bluQube.

Previously the university had relied on temporary staff to help overcome staffing challenges, which took a significant amount of permanent staff’s time up in training and familiarising recruits with the finance systems.

To overcome this, Glyndwr’s finance team brought in resource from bluQube, the developers of the finance system used by the university, to support with debt management. This meant that the finance team only had to brief the bluQube team on who to chase and how without having to bring them up to speed on the software, as bluQube’s expert was already thoroughly familiar with it.

Throughout this working relationship between Glyndwr and bluQube, a number of old and existing debts were recovered for the university. The age of outstanding invoices was also improved significantly.

The in-depth knowledge brought by bluQube’s employee, who has been with the company for three years and has 25 years’ experience in credit control, also raised and solved questions around whether debt recovery could be made more efficient within the system. A capacity for automated processes was identified and implemented, taking pressure off the university team for chasing debt, resulting in further long-term benefit moving forwards.

This automation was something the university had wanted to achieve previously but was finding it difficult to find the time to implement. Bringing in resource from bluQube has filled a gap where the team was previously stretched and quickly made a clear internal impact.

David Elcock, executive director of finance at Glyndwr University, said: “The support we received from Rachel at bluQube was incredible. As the providers of our software, using an expert from the company for extra resource meant that we had no anxieties around data protection or similar issues that may come with bringing in third-party help.

“The knowledgeable, skilled and calm manner that Rachel brought to our debt collection processes, as well as her expertise with the software, brought some excellent results to the university. She spent 219 hours chasing debts and working on the new automation, but it would normally take most of that time to train someone on how to use the system.”

Bringing in support with knowledge of systems saved the university about a week in time of running through the basics, estimating that it would take two to four weeks to train someone to the point of being able to do the job alone. Management of agency staff would require up to half a day per week and dealing with agencies, no shows and chasing would have costed up to a day per month. Additionally, not having to source or provide kit for bluQube’s employee as the software could be accessed through the cloud will have saved the university’s IT department anywhere between half and a full day worth of work.

Rachel Drake, accounts assistant at bluQube, said: “It was brilliant to spend time with the team at Glyndwr, working behind-the-scenes in a higher education setting and seeing first-hand the wonderful work performed by the team.

“I had fantastic opportunities to grow and expand my role during my time working with the team. I did credit control for one ledger and accounts and then, after a few months, I did the whole university ledger, not including students, along with innovations and NWS (science) ledgers. As well as supporting on the recovery of existing debts, I worked with the team to set up schedules to make processes simpler going forwards.”