About ARU

Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) traces its origins to the Cambridge School of Art, founded in 1858, and was awarded University status in 1992. One of the largest universities in the East of England, with locations in Cambridge, Chelmsford, Peterborough and London, ARU has around 34,500 students, 24,000 undergraduate, 10,000 postgraduate taught, and the remainder undertaking doctoral degrees. ARU’s mission is ‘To transform lives through innovative, inclusive and entrepreneurial education and research’.

In December 2023 ARU was awarded the University of the Year award at the Times Higher Education awards – the highest profile prize in the university sector. The award recognised their transformative impact across the East of England, and the clarity and ambition of their mission – the citation stating that their “achievements paint a picture of a university that knows what and who it is for and is delivering – including taking calculated risks to support its region to the full.”

ARU has a growing reputation for research excellence. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF2021), the university submitted research in 16 subject areas, achieving world-leading recognition in almost all of them, with their real-world impact being recognised as world-leading in nine of those.

A key priority for ARU is to build on REF 2021, growing their research excellence, supported by increased external research income and collaboration with industry. ARU facilitates collaborative research through three over-arching Research, Innovation and Impact Themes, focussing on key global challenges (Sustainable Futures; Health, Performance and Wellbeing; and Safe & Inclusive Communities), six research institutes and a variety of research centres and groups, providing an innovative, sustainable and supportive research culture and environment.

ARU’s decision to purchase Worktribe

Since 2017, ARU had been using an electronic RCP tool, but it was a minor module from a Finance and HR system and therefore did not have the targeted requirements they required to easily cost a bid. Problems included not being able to record costing with external partners, multiple funders and cross School research.

ARU’s users found the system cumbersome and time consuming, so they started using external spreadsheet to record accurate bid information rather than the costing the system and as a result data within the system became unreliable. Reporting became time consuming and manual adjustments were relied upon. Therefore, the old system did not give ARU the user-friendly experience, data quality and management information they required.

As the years progressed the tool became unfit for purpose and outdated. ARU made Process Systems and Data a key strategic priority over the next few years, and they needed a costing system that could fulfil this requirement. Having reviewed the market, ARU felt that Worktribe could bring a more accurate and efficient system to their Research Costing and Pricing processes, so they purchased Worktribe Pre-Award and Post-Award in 2022.

Implementing Worktribe at ARU

The implementation of Worktribe Pre-Award and Post-Award took 7 months, with all the targets in the original project plan being successfully met. As with all implementation projects, a dedicated Implementation Consultant was allocated to the project, contributing to a timely, smooth and ultimately successful system implementation.

During the implementation project, ARU utilised Worktribe’s extensive API access to pull and generate custom reports which automatically update; for example with bidding activity data.

ARU’s IT department has praised the documentation provided and the amount of data available via the API that can be utilised.

Transformative benefits for ARU

Having been unhappy with their previous RCP, ARU immediately recognised the benefit of moving to Worktribe. With Pre-Award and Post-Award now in place, they have user friendly, efficient, and accurate project costing and can monitor a project from the start of the idea, through the bid process, funder negotiations, project monitoring through to project completion.

Other benefits recognised by ARU include:

• Worktribe Pre-Award has given them the ability to improve previous integrations with their staff data and it has bought a quick and efficient approval process.
• Improvements in their ability to record partnership working and record KTPs.
• Being able to easily swap between currencies has been useful for their international research projects.
• Transparency and data sharing amongst research teams has been invaluable, and staff have found that the search and reporting features easy to use.
• Improvements to data recording of external partnerships has been and will be of great use in meeting their future strategic priorities.

In summary, Worktribe has provided ARU with everything they need to cost and monitor a project. They now have improved retrieval of management data and can proactively use the data to inform decisions. Furthermore, they have confidence in the management information that enables them to ensure ARU projects and programmes are effectively supported.