Education providers can find it an uphill challenge when trying to overcome different pricing modes and venue contracts when forecasting and booking venues for exams.

PSP-IT has successfully built an industry-leading tool for the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) which eliminated the headache of booking venues for its 200,000 members in 150 countries.

Automated Orders for Every Venue

Once the exam booking window closes, CIPS know exactly how many students will be in each venue, and the date and time of their exams.

By combining the amount of bookings, plus the venues’ contract and pricing models, the system’s algorithm calculates the order value for every venue and collates into the specific orders for the venue suppliers. Therefore, they’ll know precisely what they’ll be spending so reliable revenue and cost forecasting can be done well in advance before the exams are sat.

The system generates an order requisition for every venue which goes straight into CIPS’ Sage system and gets sent out as an order to all the exam centres.

Accurate Cost Forecasting

Before the system was built, the staff would make a blanket order when they initially hired the venue, which was often wrong compared to the final invoice from the venue. This meant their spending did not always match their budget or forecast and led to a significant amount of wasted work.

Integrates Pricing Models

Working with different pricing models for different venues proved difficult and time-consuming for CIPS’ staffs when booking venues across various countries.

Each venue has different pricing models, including:

• Minimum order quantity
• Cost per seat
• Fixed cost

The smart tool combines the pricing model with the number of bookings and the contract with the venue to produce separate orders for individual venues across the globe.

The system also manages the allocation and automates the process between the student booking online and calculating the cost of venue hire for all the exam centres.

This intelligent online tool is an example of how PSP can build a bespoke solution for any business by understanding its processes.

PSP-IT possesses more than 35 years’ combined experience in providing bespoke IT solutions, which we combine with extensive knowledge of the education and charity sectors to supply major Chartered Institutes with industry-leading solutions.

To find out more about what we provide, speak to our team of professionals today.

Call: 01775 722377, or email: letstalk@psp-it.co.uk