INDUSTRY
Education
Digitizing education for blended and immersive learning experiences
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Overview
The Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC) is a UK based awarding body, being the largest provider in Wales and a leading provider in England and Northern Ireland through its Eduqas brand. The WJEC offers trusted bilingual qualifications, dependable assessment services, and expert support to schools and colleges across the country. The organization is committed to advancing education through key strategic goals, including the adoption of digital assessments, the integration of evolving technologies to enhance learning experiences, and a strong focus on sustainability.
To support these ambitions, WJEC partnered with TCS to validate and transform its core exam processing systems. This collaboration aims to modernize the entire examination lifecycle—spanning pre-exam preparation, exam delivery, post-exam processing, and post-result services.
WJEC transforms its exam processing systems for seamless user experience
Challenges
WJEC faced several challenges that impeded its ability to operate efficiently and respond to changing educational demands. The reliance on legacy systems resulted in high operational costs and limited agility, making it difficult to support evolving business needs and deliver a modern user experience.
- Multiple legacy applications with:
- Overlapping functionalities
- Duplicate data entry
- Outdated UI/UX
- Diverse and inconsistent technology stacks
- Operational inefficiencies and high maintenance costs
- Heavy reliance on manual operations due to a lack of automation.
- Inability to deliver timely upgrades and enhancements, affecting efficiency and competitiveness.
Solution
To address these, WJEC partnered with TCS to implement a comprehensive transformation strategy. The solution focused on delivering a seamless and efficient experience for business users while modernizing the core systems to be scalable, resilient, and future-ready. TCS began with a consulting engagement to assess the existing systems, identify critical gaps, and design a future-state architecture aligned with WJEC’s strategic goals.
The transformation followed a phased approach, beginning with the successful launch of an initial application that served as a foundational model. Subsequent phases are being rolled out incrementally, guided by principles of early value delivery, minimal business disruption, and cost optimization through rightsizing and right-shoring.
Benefits
The transformation led by TCS delivered substantial value across multiple dimensions of WJEC’s operations. By modernizing the core systems and adopting agile, technology-driven practices, WJEC experienced measurable improvements in efficiency, user satisfaction, and overall business performance. The journey not only accelerated the pace of transformation but also ensured long-term scalability and resilience.
Key outcomes:
- Faster realization of strategic goals with accelerated transformation journey
- Improved user experience and usability enhancing satisfaction and ease of use for business users
- Reduction in manual operations through automation, significantly lowering operational overhead
- Increased business productivity, elevating teams to focus on value-added tasks
- Enhanced operational efficiency, streamlining processes and reducing delays
Watch this video to hear Ben Newby, Executive Director, Digital and Transformation, Ian Morgan – Chief Executive, and senior leaders from WJEC talk about TCS’ pivotal role in modernizing WJEC’s core systems, improving user experience and productivity, and creating a future-ready, resilient platform. This transformation positioned WJEC to continue leading in the education sector with agility, innovation, and efficiency at its core.
We wanted to engage with a strategic partner for our transformation programme, who had the breadth of skills and the expertise to address our legacy platforms, the understanding of our industry to help us tackle some of our challenges, but also that cultural fit. I wanted a partner who has flexibility and can help us address challenges as they emerge and work in different ways, bringing their global experience, and so far, TCS has shown that flexibility, to reprioritize based on sometimes external circumstances beyond our control.