Pearson higher education custom software application.

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Working with RoleModel Software was such a positive experience that we have now done multiple projects together. These efforts have helped us connect more learners to the education they want and need. In fact, we were able to accommodate a 500% volume increase in under 6 weeks. We were impressed by RoleModel’s effective communication, timely delivery, and willingness to learn our needs to support the development of a sustainable solution that not only accomplished what we needed, but helped us improve related processes as well.

Jared Brandau

Director, Central Registrar's Office

Pearson Accelerated Pathways

Overview

Lumerit (now Pearson) is a higher education company that uses technology and expert guidance from education professionals to help students find the right degree at the lowest cost. Leveraging a comprehensive database of thousands of colleges and academic courses, Pearson’s Accelerated Pathways assists students by analyzing student need and producing a holistic view of student options, evaluating everything from transfer credit acceptance, outside course options, target school priorities, employer tuition assistance programs, and overall program cost expectations.

Problem

In 2019, Lumerit Education was facing a monthly student intake increase of over 500% due to a new Fortune 50 corporate partner. Ultimately they needed a tool that would allow them to scale and help their academic advisors become more efficient by automating select processes. Beyond saving time, this helped reduce the amount of training and assistance needed for their academic advisors and new employees. When Pearson deemed that building a system internally was not a viable path forward, they set about to find a partner who could meet the need and put a system in place quickly.

Solution

RoleModel Software sat down with Lumerit’s education experts and collaboratively identified options to enhance business practices and provide the right solution. Using agile development practices, RoleModel communicated daily with Lumerit delivering value early and often. On the second day of development, RoleModel deployed a fully functional prototype of a basic process in Lumerit’s workflow, showing all the calculations for one degree. This allowed Lumerit’s team to give early feedback. Daily collaboration let the Lumerit team test functionality quicker, find issues faster, make changes more quickly, and discover new features needed.

When Lumerit Education was acquired by Pearson, Pearson made the strategic decision to expand the system’s capabilities by adding features and improving functionality. Central Registrars Director Jared Brandau championed the process of collaboratively translating high level education expertise into software automation and user-guided workflows. Pearson’s experts are now able to spend less time on administrative tasks, and their academic advisors are able to be more effective with less assistance. The system now offers features like: a college search by radius, enhanced ease-of-use, high level cost filter/sorting capabilities, and a user-guided mode. With every iteration of development, Pearson was able to see their vision come to life.

Results

By actively learning Pearson’s domain, RoleModel’s team was able to provide a long-term, well-tested software asset, and help improve business practices in the process. In the initial effort with Lumerit, RoleModel quickly delivered effective software, which developed a long-term partnership that continued when the business was acquired by Pearson. Now, as Pearson’s Accelerated Pathway, the software asset is used by college experts and non-experts alike. The new workflow enables Pearson’s employees to be more effective and has opened up more opportunities for the students they serve.