Group Professional Services and Group Functions
Group Professional Services (GPS) encompasses Finance, Information Services, HR, Marketing, Communications, PR & Public Affairs, Safety, Health & Environment, and Risk. Together, this dynamic team of 200 functional experts works collaboratively across all areas of the Group, using their expertise to help to shape our future.
GPS drive transformation in the way we deliver professional services. With a clear focus on digital transformation and a “do it once, do it right” approach, the team is streamlining processes to eliminate duplication, increase efficiency, and reduce costs.
Our Group Functions are at the heart of ensuring that the Group and its business units run smoothly and efficiently. By providing essential infrastructure, expertise, and support, they enable us to work with pace, precision, and compliance—all to better meet the needs of our learners, partners, and communities. This includes our Legal & Governance, Data Protection, Estates, Quality, and Print Services teams that provide additional specialist expertise, ensuring we continue to operate with strength, compliance, and focus across every part of our organisation.
Together our Group Professional Service and Group Function colleagues provide our five organisations with access to a range of specialist expertise that plays an integral role in ensuring that we can make our vision and mission become a reality.
Recent examples of how Group Operations works with our business areas to deliver excellence:
- Supporting delivery of seven years of good financial health grade for our group, critical to our estates strategy
- Successfully implementing business partner model, and associated new finance systems including Business World
- Organisational delivery with strong IT infrastructure certified to ISO levels - ISO27001, ISO22301
- Key part of Prisons Education Framework contract including development and implementation of new IT solution
- Significant improvements across our group towards gaining new framework standard ISO 45001
- Development of a people strategy for 4,200 colleagues
- Upskilling of managers in managing people issues such as discipline and grievance cases, reducing central team costs
- Development of a recognition strategy including increasingly popular Outstanding Achievement Awards event
- Launch and embedding of group and distinct brands, with clearly defined marketing and communication strategies
- Implemented highly-refined model for marketing recruitment performance to drive student numbers in key markets combining online and offline expertise
- Development and implementation of HUB, new colleague intranet based on Sharepoint
- Innovative use of Power BI for tracking enrolment pipeline and learner data for attendance and funding requirements
- Implementation of a comprehensive Group wide risk management process
- Policy radar on central, regional and local government – awareness and influence of key policy developments in justice, further and higher education among multiple areas
- Group lead on business research analytics and insight to inform business planning and development
- Connecting research sources and intelligence, market / competitor insights and trend spotting, to provide analysis and recommendations in support of the group’s strategic aims
Key Facts
- Created
- Developed as part of the LTE Group launch in 2016.
- Number of colleagues
- Total of 350 primarily located at our Wythenshawe Campus in Manchester, with colleagues co-located across multiple campus and business locations.
- Vision
- Provide high quality professional advice and expertise, along with highly efficient (best value) transactional processes to underpin the service delivery of our businesses for our learners.
- Delivery
- Leaders in supporting delivery of BAU services synchronised with core business cycles. Long-term strategic projects and accreditations covering Finance, Health & Safety, HR, IT, Marketing / Communications, and MIS. Fully integrated hub and spoke approach.
- Accreditations
- Infrastructure certified to ISO levels - ISO27001, ISO22301 and working towards gaining new framework standard ISO 45001.
- Awards
- Recognised by numerous industry service awards at regional and national standards.