“University of the Arts London, Central Services Entrance” by Ualwebsupport, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Company
University of the Arts London (UAL)
University of the Arts London (UAL) is recognised globally as a leading higher education institution in art, design, fashion, and the performing arts. The university employs hundreds of staff, including a large cohort of hourly-paid lecturers and tutors who play a vital role in providing flexible teaching across its colleges.
The Challenge
UAL depends on a custom built product to manage and pay its hourly-paid academic staff.
Originally developed by another vendor, the system had become increasingly challenging to maintain and enhance.
UAL faced three key issues:
• Support & Maintenance: The system needed a reliable new partner to take on third-line (advanced) support, ensuring it stayed secure, compliant, and effective for staff and students alike.
• Finance Functionality: The finance team required richer data extracts and more flexible reporting. Important fields—such as start and acceptance dates, academic monthly totals, and “cover for” details—weren’t available on the main Contracts screen.
• Performance & Integration: The application required more stable hosting and improved data-handling processes to support seamless integration with HR payroll, finance system file uploads, and other imports and exports.
Without tackling these challenges, UAL risked payroll errors, administrative inefficiencies, and potential disruption to teaching.
The Solution
Treaty Software (formerly ActionPoint) partnered with UAL to stabilise and improve the system.
• Structured Support Onboarding
Treaty took over third-line support from the previous vendor, introducing SLA-backed processes to manage break/fix issues, maintenance, and staff queries.
• Finance Enhancements
– Delivered enhanced data extracts for start/acceptance dates, academic-month totals (Aug–Jul), and “cover for” pay code details.
– Streamlined reporting options so finance users could access new fields directly in the Contracts screen or through standalone reports.
• Formalised Change Management
Updates—whether related to pay codes or monthly calculations—were rolled out through a consistent technical and QA process, reducing disruption and improving system stability.
• Ongoing Maintenance & Guidance
– Took responsibility for code updates, third-party library changes, and security patches.
– Established an SLA-driven service desk and carried out knowledge transfer to ensure rapid responses to high-priority issues, day or night.
The Result
UAL quickly saw positive results from Treaty Software’s involvement:
• Reliable Support: Staff had confidence that critical incidents would be handled promptly under SLA commitments.
• Smarter Finance Data: Enhanced extracts and reports reduced manual work, improving payroll accuracy and efficiency.
• Better Aligned with Academic Cycles: Being able to export data by academic year (Aug–Jul) simplified reconciliation and budgeting.
• Future-Proofed System: With Treaty’s structured support in place, UAL’s system can evolve securely and sustainably without service disruption.
By stabilising and modernising the system, Treaty Software has helped UAL continue to manage its hourly-paid teaching staff effectively—supporting the smooth running of one of the world’s top creative universities.
Clients were initially engaged by Action Point and have since become Treaty Software clients. For more information on this transition, please visit www.treatysoftware.com/about/our-history.