Challenge

Harris Federation experienced complex issues that compromised their ability to deliver outstanding educational services while meeting stringent regulatory standards across their extensive academy network. A fragmented system landscape created operational friction for both administrative staff and end-users, with disconnected back-office systems that resulted in manual data reconciliation, increased error rates, and reduced business efficiency.

The organisation was severely constrained by legacy on-premises systems that were both costly to maintain and inflexible to evolving business requirements. Critical financial processes, including payment processing for parent bursaries and vouchers, lacked efficiency and automation.

In addition, the complex tracking and reconciliation requirements for ringfenced budgets from funding sources such as Department for Education (DoE) grants and Local Authority allocations, was proving problematic. The absence of real-time operational reporting capabilities hindered strategic decision-making and financial oversight across their academy network. Traditional back-office systems required extensive manual intervention and lacked integration capabilities, creating inefficiencies and increasing business risk.

Precis

Harris Federation successfully transformed their educational operations across 54 academies through de Novo’s innovative Odyssea® for Multi-Academy Trusts solution. This entailed moving from fragmented legacy systems to a unified Oracle Cloud platform to support 5,000+ staff members and in turn serve 40,000 students.

de Novo’s template-based methodology provided 80% of the required functionality through proven, industry-specific configurations, with only 20% customisation needed to address Harris Federation’s unique operational requirements. This approach eliminated the risks typically associated with traditional greenfield implementations.

With deep understanding of the education sector, including DoE requirements and Local Authority processes, de Novo provided the specialised expertise needed for seamless integration while maintaining compliance throughout the transition. Their knowledge transfer and change management support successfully coordinated the transformation across 54 geographically distributed academies.

Outcome

The Odyssea® implementation delivered transformational outcomes across Harris Federation’s operations, and positioned the organisation as a sector leader in educational technology adoption. The delivered benefits include:

  • Unified Operations: Centralised back-office functions through a common integrated platform to support Finance, HR, and payroll across all 52 academies
  • Cost Optimisation: Sustainable cost reduction through enhanced operational efficiency, reduced errors, elimination of manual processes, and strategic insourcing of payroll operations
  • Strategic Insights: Established real-time visibility and reporting capabilities, providing the tools to support data-driven decision-making across the academy network
  • Regulatory Efficiency: Substantial reduction in legislative return processing time, eliminating risk of financial penalties that could impact academy budgets
  • Automated Compliance: Improved DoE reporting, ensuring consistent regulatory adherence without manual intervention
  • AI Enablement: Embedded algorithms to automate complex processes such as legislative return processing, smart reconciliation of payments, automatic transaction matching, identification of discrepancies, and flagging exceptions
  • Workflow Optimisation: Adaptive workflows with intelligent routing capabilities automatically direct requests to appropriate approvers based on transaction type and organisational hierarchy
  • Sustainable Growth: Ideally positioned to support expansion while maintaining efficiency, compliance, and excellence across all academies, and influence best practices across the broader MAT community.