UCAS renews Infosys contract

Infosys has signed a new minimum three-year contract with UCAS, the admissions service for UK higher education.

UCAS and Infosys have enjoyed a successful technology partnership since 2015 but following an extensive tender process the new contract represents a major step change in the relationship, focusing on delivering seamless customer service experiences through greater automation, innovation and efficiency.

UCAS provides vital admissions and information services to students, schools, advisers, and higher education providers, offering over 30,000 courses to prospective applicants each year. The service delivers the single biggest infrastructure event within the UK education sector annually on results days every August. UCAS supports approximately 700,000 applicants every year– with 60,000 more this year than in 2020, and current predictions suggesting there will be 1 million applicants to higher education in the UK by 2025.

The partnership between UCAS and Infosys is fundamental to the support and delivery of a professional and stable platform that students and the people advising and supporting them, can rely on when navigating their journey to higher education.

As part of the new agreement Infosys will provide a wide range of digital services that will enable UCAS to further develop the capabilities that connect learners to universities, awarding bodies, schools, and other organisations, built on a dynamic digital suite of systems able to rapidly respond to the evolving UK higher education sector. Infosys will continue to concentrate on helping UCAS achieve its ambitious targets on lowering costs, optimizing, and enhancing services for students, delivering more robust security, and providing business-as-usual (BAU) services between legacy and new digital systems.

Today’s announcement follows UCAS’ busiest Results Day ever on 10th  August, with 1.5 million logins registered in UCAS Track (peaking at 2000 logins per second), 182,126 page views on the Career Finder tool, and UCAS teams supporting more than 11,000 students with queries on the phone or via social media. The traffic is the highest volume to UCAS’ systems ever seen on the most important day of the year for UCAS.

Sander Kristel, UCAS’ Chief Operations Officer said, “I cannot emphasise enough the importance of this new agreement with Infosys, and the benefits to UCAS staff and customers. It represents a real shift in our partnership, and will focus extensively on automation, innovation, and efficiency across the business, which is key to delivering on our strategy for the future.

UCAS is seeing an increase in student demand across all areas; a demographic uplift, and a growing demand from mature students and overseas applicants means that we are anticipating a million undergraduate applicants by 2025. We need to ensure that the future services that we provide reflect the diverse range of options that applicants will have, for instance when looking for an apprenticeship. That is why this new contract with Infosys is fundamental for us to continue to deliver an efficient and effective service for all of our customers and stay at the top of our game as the go to place for higher education across the globe.”

Ashiss Kumar Dash, EVP and Segment Head - services, utilities, resources, energy at Infosys emphasized, “Our relationship with UCAS spans the last six years, and our renewed partnership is testament to the great success we’ve achieved in that time, delivering on UCAS’ digital vision. In the next three years, we will continue to bring together industry leading capabilities, ecosystems and talent to deliver new experiences that reflect the growing expectations and changing dynamics in the higher education sector. With a focus on delivering greater innovation and seamless customer service experiences, we look forward to supporting UCAS retain its position as a highly trusted and accessible service.”