We are proud to announce a new system, called RADius, for the Royal Academy of Dance, based on our customisable Parnassus solution. Initially this was for UK operations but throughout the following two years the system was rolled out across other countries and business units. Parnassus now manages 245,000 learners per year and tens of thousands of external users across more than 70 countries around the world.
"It is an honour to be associated with one of the world's most influential dance education organisations," says Rod Gordon, Director of Gordon Associates. "The RAD has been a global leader in classical ballet examinations for a hundred years and is recognised as one of the leading exam boards in its field. This project is a real feather in our cap."
RADius is an integrated solution based on a combination of Parnassus for the exams side of the business and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for membership - which has been delivered by our partners Silverbear. We have also integrated to the Access Dimensions finance system, SagePay and Realex for worldwide online card payments, and Digital Certificates for secure certificate printing.
The core of the exams solution is based on Parnassus, but this has been extended to cover every aspect of the business cycle, from planning exam sessions at one end to generating certificates at the other. Teachers are able to log in to an online portal to register students, select an exam session, (eg spring or autumn), and enter the cohort of students who will attend the exam. Entries are then scheduled and assigned to tours, where examiners travel to the schools to examine students across a wide range of qualifications using a sophisticated marking scheme. Once marks are entered, moderated and signed off, teachers can log back into the system to view their candidates’ results.
Andrew McBirnie, Director of Examinations at the RAD, said “This project is a game changer for the RAD. It represents the most significant shift to our business processes in a generation, providing us with a fully integrated global platform, and enabling us to harness the benefits and efficiencies of modern technology. Feedback from customers so far is hugely positive, and Gordon Associates have been a joy to work with, always responsive, engaged, and determined to get it right!”

www.royalacademyofdance.org

... British Gymnastics, Rugby Football Union (RFU), England Hockey and Sports Coach UK, to develop and award qualifications for the active learning and leisure industry. 1st4Sport Qualifications is using a customised implementation of GA's Parnassus solution for awarding bodies. The system provides support for the administration and management of qualifications, approved learning providers, events, registration of learners and grade entry. Tony Dallimore, Education Director, says “The system has proved popular with all business users, reducing processing time, streamlining business processes and improving customer service.” In addition, 1st4Sport have been using our Talus system to manage the EPA side of their business. 1st4Sport also use our Monarch system to manage compliance and risk - as well as managing other business processes such as reasonable adjustments and centre approvals.

www.1st4sportqualifications.com

Based in Birmingham, ABBE provides qualifications for the built environment including disciplines such as construction, surveying, plan and project management, home inspection, energy assessment and valuation. Parnassus enhances ABBE’s ability to maintain their qualification structures, manage their database of approved centres, register candidates, capture results and produce certificates. The system has been customised to ABBE's way of working and will allow ABBE to improve data accuracy and improve efficiency. A recent survey of their centres showed that all had positive feedback on the new online learner registration which is being facilitated by Parnassus.

www.abbeqa.co.uk

Skillsfirst went live with Parnassus, enabling staff to maintain their qualification structures, manage their database of approved centres, register learners, capture achievement and produce certificates. A key element of the project is the provision of a Registration/certification Electronic Gateway – known as REG – that facilitates collaboration with centres delivering rapid turnaround of services along with administration efficiencies. The project also features integration with Advanced Secure’s secure certificate printing solution, the Sage finance package and Skillsfirst’s eAssessment system.

www.skillsfirst.co.uk

Future has been a client of Gordon Associates for a number of years and uses our Parnassus awarding body management system. Parnassus enhances Future’s ability to maintain their qualification structures, manage their database of approved centres, register learners, capture results and produce certificates - and now eCertficates. In addition the online registration facility has provided significant benefits in terms of efficiency and data accuracy.

futurequals.com

The Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) is the leading body in the UK for taxation professionals dealing with all aspects of tax. Their primary purpose is to promote education in taxation. Membership of the CIOT is by examination, nationally recognised as the gold standard of UK taxation education. They support 17,000 members and 4,000 students. Their primary qualification is the CTA - Chartered Tax Adviser.
The CIOT also runs the Association of Taxation Technicians, which is the leading professional body for those providing UK tax compliance services. They have over 9,000 members and Fellows, together with over 5,000 students. Members and Fellows use the practising title 'Taxation Technician' or 'Taxation Technician (Fellow)' respectively.
CIOT/ATT went live in 2018 with a Parnassus-based solution for managing qualifications, registrations and certification. This forms part of an overall integrated system featuring Microsoft Dynamics CRM for membership, Prometric for online multiple choice tests and Secure & Confidential Documents (SCD) for marking of paper-based exams.

www.tax.org.uk

Formerly known as Amateur Swimming Association (ASA), Swim England Qualifications is a long-term user of Parnassus. The system which has recently been extended to support additional workflows and document management, enables staff to maintain their qualification structures, manage their database of approved centres, register learners, capture achievement and produce certificates. GA built a series of customisations for Swim England's business processes as well as extending the solution to handle CPD and courses. The courses functionality allows centres to register an event covering specific units of a qualification, internal staff to approve the course request and then manage the ongoing data capture through to the shipment of certificates.

www.swimming.org

VTCT qualifications are delivered at over 500 colleges of further education, private training providers and schools throughout the United Kingdom. International delivery of VTCT qualifications is expanding and includes countries such as Turkey, Romania, India, Malta and Kenya and this will continue to develop through the partnership forged with HABIA, the Standards Setting Body for the hairdressing, beauty and related therapies sectors, to develop a joint international delivery venture.
VTCT selected GA's Parnassus framework to provide support for their core internal processes such as registration through to certification, as well as Microsoft CRM, online facilities for business partners & customers and integration with finance and e-commerce. VTCT is one of the largest users of Parnassus with over 100,000 registrations per year.

vtct.org.uk

Ascentis is an Awarding Organisation, regulated by Ofqual, CCEA and Qualification Wales, which manages over a hundred thousand registrations each year across a wide range of subject areas. The organisation has recently transitioned to Parnassus and is in the process of rolling out training to thousands of centres.
Gordon Harrison, director of Gordon Associates, says: “It’s a privilege to be responsible for such a key component of the Ascentis infrastructure and we are proud to be supporting this award-winning AO with their plans to expand over the coming years. All the staff at Ascentis have been a pleasure to work with and their enthusiasm has made the transition to the new system as smooth as humanly possible.”
The core aspects of the project have been processing of registrations, management of achievement and provision of certificates, as with any awarding organisation. However, key facets of the solution are the provision of services to centres via a new portal and management of thousands of documents. In addition, Parnassus is integrated with the Surpass eAssessment system for the delivery of online tests, and the AO is delivering eCertificates via Parnassus, as well as traditional certificates.
Furthermore, Ascentis is an Access Validating Agency for Access to Higher Education Diplomas (Access to HE), licensed by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) – and this function is now being managed by Parnassus. The organisation offers a portfolio of user-friendly qualifications which include Access to Higher Education Diplomas, Community Interpreting, Construction, Digital Skills, Employability, English & Maths Skills, ESOL, Education & Training and Short Online Qualifications (SOQs).

www.ascentis.co.uk

The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) has a series of core qualifications ranging from the Level 2 Certificate in Procurement and Supply Operations to the Level 6 Professional Diploma in Procurement and Supply. The exam board also offers a number of other products including a Corporate Awards Programme with training resources tailored to clients’ requirements. CIPS are using the Parnassus business management system to administer qualifications and exams.
Rod Gordon, director of Gordon Associates, says: “It’s an honour to support CIPS who are recognised as the benchmark of procurement and supply throughout the world. The CIPS brand is a great British export and we are proud to be a small part of their ongoing success.”
The CIPS exam board processes tens of thousands of assessments annually throughout dozens of countries. Exams are grouped into a number of series across the year, with each timetable covering a week or a fortnight. CIPS are also moving to an on-demand model over the coming years.
Parnassus is integrated with the Oracle CRM system which handles membership, but which also provides an extensive portal incorporating online exam bookings. These are fed into the Parnassus system which manages the end-to-end exam function and then passes completion records back to Oracle as part of a member’s qualification history.
Markers use the Parnassus portal in order to enter marks which are fed into a comprehensive moderation process which also allows moderators review entries on the portal. The integrated solution also includes the Testreach eAssessment system. Parnassus transfers eligible exam bookings to Testreach and then, after the assessment, collects the marks which it compiles with results from other units to build an overall qualification record for each student.

www.cips.org

Gordon Associates worked with the Royalties Department on the design and development of a new system for the definition and management of book rights, the administration of sub-contracted third party rights (subrights) and related financial transactions such as royalties to Macmillan from third parties, royalties to authors from Macmillan, invoicing of subrights and chasing of payments. The system was provided in the form of a web-based intranet.

macmillan.com

This pilot project was designed as a forerunner to a subsequent rollout to over 250 staff across the other marketing departments of Pearson and allowed the organisation to assess Microsoft CRM’s capabilities for handling customer contact information, communications with customers (centres), marketing campaign management, integration with telephone system – and much more besides.

www.pearson.com

The project integrated a number of the printing processes via a unique barcoding system, which allows improved traceability from the loading of magazines onto pallets, through the consolidation of pallets into consignments, to the delivery of consignments to warehouses and shops across the country.

The system is sold on a rental basis from £50 per user per month depending on volume of titles and users. That's Rights Online is completely web-based which allows you to access your rights information from anywhere in the world. That's Rights! is used by publishers and agents in: Australia • Belgium • Canada • Egypt • Finland • France • Germany • Greece • Ireland • Italy • Netherlands • Norway • Serbia • South Africa • Spain • Sweden • United Kingdom • United States.

www.thatsrights.com

The website needed to present these customers with a consistent corporate image based on a centralised product structure. This completely web-based application allows internal users in each country to define product groupings, exhibitions, news and events specific to their market, but also based on the corporate structure in a central SQL Server database located in the UK.

www.huntleigh.healthcare

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module is the latest component of the MiDAS enterprise management system which supports the business of a number of companies in the group. In addition to holding customer contact information, the CRM module allows users to track sales activities including phone calls, sales visits and emails, letters and other documents sent to the customer or received from the customer.

www.onsite.co.uk

Vision Profiles supply bespoke aluminium extrusions with assembly and fabrication options to a wide range of industries. GA provides support for a sophisticated business management system which manages purchasing, stock, sales orders, production orders and integration to Sage for financial management.

www.visionprofiles.co.uk

The system imported data regarding shipments into the UK from manufacturing bases around the world and provided stock information for the UK operation.

www.sony.com

Krone needed a way of pulling the key information together from each area to provide a "business dashboard" for strategic management decisions. GA provided a data warehouse of all orders, product information, budgets and forecasts with reporting tools that allowed staff to analyse the data in different ways such as comparing sales forecasts against actuals.

www.tyco.com

An important feature of the project was the installation and configuration of a dual server with hot failover: the systems primary server was in fact two servers running exact duplicates of the system from a shared, mirrored hard disk. The system is running on one server with the second server continuously monitoring. If the first server crashes, the second server automatically assumes it’s network address, starts up the system and takes over all services – within 60 seconds of the crash.

www.pilkington.com

The system enables users to instantly analyse current workload against available capacity and quote accurate delivery dates to their customers. The system includes powerful ‘what-if’ analysis tools to model demand and loading of potential orders.

www.linpacpackaging.com

Gordon Associates is proud to have helped Randall & Payne to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM to support the firm's sales and marketing function. The solution tracks accounts, contacts & leads - with a series of customisations on the standard system - as well as providing an event management function.

www.randall-payne.co.uk

The system caters for securities for loans and features monthly capitalisation of loan interest with regular customer mailings of account information and payment requests. In addition the system features management information reports such as drop-offs, total interest charges split by month and total income. The Stroud & Swindon Building Society recently merged with the Coventry Building Society.

www.coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk

Premier Choice Group specialises in healthcare insurance services for both individuals and corporate clients. Gordon Associates is providing support and enhancements for the core business management system which manages clients, policies, insurers, document management, integration to finance systems, calculation of commissions.

pch.uk.com

HKA provides expert witnesses and psychological assessments for insurance claims and legal cases. GA has provided a sophisticated business management system which manages clients, expert associates, cases, invoicing and management reporting. Security is an important aspect of the system as it features medical records and other sensitive information related to cases.

www.hughkochassociates.co.uk

www.cellmark.co.uk

Intervet are a subsidiary of the Akzo Nobel chemicals and pharmaceuticals corporation. The Intervet group is made up of twelve pharmaceutical companies around the world, producing animal vaccines. Intervet have developed an in-house enterprise application which covers finance, logistics and manufacturing. The system is based on an Oracle database. Intervet have recently installed the Tempo scheduling system which is a Windows based application and they selected BusinessBus as the integration framework to allow the two systems to transfer production orders, scheduling parameters and planned orders.

akzonobel.com/en

www.astrazeneca.com

The company produces clothes, shoes, furniture and accessories via sales outlets in London, Milan, New York, Paris, Hong Kong and many other countries. Gordon Associates builds dynamic web-sites that integrate with underlying databases or internal systems. Working in partnership with the client's infrastructure providers, Gordon Associates provided an integration project for www.paulsmith.co.uk. The work extended the capabilities of Shop section of the site to provide a direct link to the internal Microsoft CRM system for creation of customer records and service cases. Gordon Associates has also provided services for the customisation and configuration of Microsoft CRM to better fit the Paul Smith business processes – and in addition has developed a series of Business Intelligence reports tailored to the requirements of business managers.

www.paulsmith.com/uk

Berrys first supplied wine to the British Royal Family during the reign of King George III and has continued to do so to the present day. Their first Royal Warrant was awarded in 1903 by King Edward VII and today they hold two Royal Warrants for H.M. The Queen and H.R.H. The Prince of Wales. GA has provided an upgraded IT system to one of Berry Bros. & Rudd’s subsidiaries that manages the supply of French wines to supermarkets and high street retailers. The system supports the management of wine producers, their product list, customers and orders along with deliveries. GA has supported the system for over ten years and the recent project provided an upgrade for the system to benefit from working with the latest version of Microsoft Office. By the way, despite being the oldest wine merchant in the country, Berry Bros. & Rudd were also one of the first online providers – and you can buy some of your wine from www.bbr.com (just thought I’d help out our client with a bit of extra publicity!)

bbr.com

The production plan includes recipe details and instructions for manufacture. The integration also provides a continuous flow of management information from the blending, bottling and packaging plants back up to SAP.

www.princes.co.uk

abergavenny.uk.com

cargill.com

The database system supports the management and administration of tenancies, rent collections, tenancy renewals. Also includes accounting functions specific to property rental business and provision of financial reporting for management.

The database system supports the management of offices, industrial units and other commercial properties and applicants looking for properties.

ng-cs.com

The eCommerce site allows complex bulk orders to be placed and enables clients to view progress of orders. The online system includes management information reports (including some amazing 3-D, moving barcharts and pie charts – go to www.globfx.com for a demonstration), integration with internal systems, and support for the returns management process. Jason Mathias commented that the web-site’s management information reports “allow Mathias to provide customers with budgetary control over orders and complete visibility of spend” and this is one of the factors which enables Mathias to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Mathias recently received the Supplier of the Year (Services) Award from Scottish & Newcastle Breweries and the MUMS web-site formed an important part of this high-profile honor according to Alan Owen, S&N Procurement Manager: “MUMS has been a revelation, improving our control and producing excellent management information” and Richard Chenney, S&N Fleet Team Manager: “The service we receive is fantastic. The quality of the products, the delivery time and the new on-line ordering system are all excellent.”

mathiasandsons.com

A business can therefore benefit from lower costs, but can also profit by working with a more senior individual than a SME might normally attract. The FD Centre works with over 300 clients and has recently expanded its operations overseas to countries such as South Africa and Australia. GA provides a support service for The FD Centre’s online Microsoft CRM system and has recently built a time recording and invoicing website called Calypso. This online web application manages clients, contracts & FDs and allows the part-time finance directors to submit the time worked at each client each month. The system then automatically builds an electronic invoice which is sent to the client along with the administrative paperwork that is required for the payment to the finance director. The website also exports these transactions to The FD Centre’s finance system.

www.thefdcentre.co.uk

theiet.org

The system, called Carpe Diem, manages clients, contracts, billing hours and exports to the corporate finance system for invoicing.

www.eversheds-sutherland.com

gca.org.uk

Logic4Training selected Endeavour from Gordon Associates as the business management system which will underpin their continued growth over the coming years. The system features customer contact and delegate management, events and courses, booking delegates onto courses - along with an extensive invoicing & payment management system for bookings. Logic's key requirements were for a system which could manage courses with modules, and the associated complex booking & invoicing processes, along with in-depth trainer utilisation reporting. This large-scale solution features integration with financial systems, business workflow engine and a wide-ranging document management function.

www.logic4training.co.uk/

Medicare-EMS supports NHS Ambulance Services, providing high-quality education to those pursuing a career in the ambulance section or supporting clinicians to further their education and safeguarding their health and well-being. The Medicare Academy offers industry-leading training and qualifications with education teams including GMC registered Doctors, HCPC registered Paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians, Emergency Care Assistants and FREC3 qualified First Responders. Courses include First Response Emergency Care, Ambulance Driving, Ambulance Patient Care and many more. Endeavour was selected by this high-profile, mission-critical business as the training management system to support their six fully-equiped training centres across the UK.

www.medicare-ems.co.uk

BTAS offer training courses and assessments for the Utilities Sector, providing training for gas fitters, electricians, emergency service providers and landlords in both private and social housing sectors. Their portfolio of courses includes renewables, electrical, air-conditioning, water and smart metering. BTAS has implemented Endeavour from Gordon Associates as their business management system.

www.gas-training.co.uk