As we come to the end of the year we are looking forward to 2023 and what it may bring. But, before we do that, we want to look back at 2022 and everything that has happened in the world of WCBS.

We had another great year working with schools, partners, and affiliations who all share our common goal of helping to provide an outstanding education.

This year WCBS has seen our product range expand with the launch of HUBadmissions, travelled across the country and around the world to meet with amazing people in Independent and International schools, and a bit closer to home returned to a new normal in Glastonbury.

As a company we like to look over the previous year and highlight some of our favourite moments and achievements.

We asked our colleagues for their 2022 highlights:

My 2022 highlight was working closely with even more of the fab WCBS team so that we can continue to provide white-glove service to our customers across every form of communication.

Emily Turner , Head of Marketing and Communication

My 2022 highlight was joining the team and after understanding our solutions, being proud to say we live in the future of EdTech.

Nathália Lemos, Customer Account Manager
2022 has been an exciting year for me. I loved being BA and working with the Product Team. I wrote over 1100 User Stories in 2022 and have loved seeing many of them come alive in HUBmis! I have now joined the Dev side!
Kerrie Watkins , Scrum Master
My 2022 highlight was cementing our Customer Account Management team and all the pieces of the CAM jigsaw fitting together so well. We have built-in new processes to help all of our workplace and customers, and reached out and spoken to more schools than ever before.
Martin Croad , Customer Account Manager Team Leader
My 2022 highlight was growing the Implementations team- now 7 strong and I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of hard working but fun individuals.
Sarah Burnell, Consultancy Services Manager

My Senior QA Engineer, Oleg, getting a Cypress automation framework in place for the HUBincome project as this will put us in a really good position for future work. But I’d also like to be able to choose my whole team as being a continual highlight- from the fantastic QA engineers to our totally amazing On Prem devs who’ve all battled through some really complicated projects with seemingly impossible deadlines. Having a team split between WCBS employees and off-shore contractors (and between HUB and On Prem, QA and Dev) has massive potential for being complicated but it really does work incredibly well and I’m told that our contractors enjoy working with us as much as we love working with them.

Christina Brown, Development Manager

2023 anticipations:

Next year I am looking forward to meeting lots of our customers at our User Conference on January 19th at Lord’s Cricket Ground, as well as at other conferences too!
Emily Turner , Head of Marketing and Communications
I am looking forward to seeing Agile working processes in full swing in 2023!
Kerrie Watkins , Scrum Master
I am looking forward to our User Group Conference in January and future events for WCBS.
Megan Peters , Digital Marketing Assistant

I am looking forward to having more features in HUBmis- especially reports! Can’t wait to see what the development team creates.

Sarah Burnell, Consultancy Services Manager

Throughout 2022 we have had some company role changes and new members to the WCBS team.

  • Emily Turner is now Head of Marketing and Communications
  • Mitja Horlemann became Support Services Manager
  • Martin Croad is now CAM Team Leader
  • Kerrie Watkins became Scrum Master
  • Iona Munro moved out of junior status
  • Neil Butcher became COO
  • Antony Woodhams became CTO

Others who have recently joined the company:

  • Emma Rutter: Project Coordinator
  • Cullen Connors: Sales Consultant
  • Ian Pollicott: Support Team Leader
  • Dan Croucher: Developer
  • Sam Churcher: CAM
  • Sam Shead: Implementation Consultant
  • Nathalia Lemos: CAM
  • Monika Kajabova: Implementation Consultant
  • Stefan Colburn: Support Consultant
  • Josh Barnes: Support Consultant
  • Charlotter Cawthorne: Sales Admin

WCBS 2022 Highlights

Launch of HUBadmissions

At the start of 2022 WBCS launched the second of our HUB family after successfully bringing HUBmis to the market.

 

HUBadmissions screens

HUBadmissions is a cloud native scalable student recruitment and admissions CRM system that will operate the end-to-end applicant journey online, professionally managing the whole process, right through to enrolment. Fully integrated within HUBmis, or as a standalone online solution, HUBadmissions gives you the tools to captivate parents from the very first touch point and helps you realise the power of your school’s admissions data to strategically drive future marketing activity.

The launch saw a successful trial period which allowed all our customers the opportunity to trial the system for free!

HUB will continue to grow in 2023 with more exciting features coming very soon. Keep your eyes peeled!

Constant development of our existing and much loved products

We’ve been in EdTech for nearly 40 years! We know that times are changing and what you need from systems you use everyday continues to adapt. We have been focused on delivering value for customers as quickly and constantly as possible to ensure we provide the best possible experience for you.

There have been releases throughout the year to help improve your user experience, and this year we have seen further development of HUBmis. Some of these updates can be demonstrated in the following stats: HUBmis has seen an uptime of 99.6% in 2022 with 1299 tickets resolved. These included 127 technical tasks, 391 user stories, 24 hotfixes, 44 change requests and 713 defects. Additional feature releases have happened throughout the year.

More digital schools now in the cloud!

In 2022 we moved more of you to our cloud platform PASS-hosted. This solution is our much-loved comprehensive finance solution passFINANCE, but in the cloud!

If you would like to talk about moving to the cloud in 2023 contact your Customer Account Manager.

More digital schools now in the cloud!

In 2022 we moved more of you to our cloud platform PASS-hosted. This solution is our much-loved comprehensive finance solution passFINANCE, but in the cloud!

If you would like to talk about moving to the cloud in 2023 contact your Customer Account Manager.

Conferences and Events

This year we started to see the return of in-person events. Our sales team were lucky enough to travel across the country and further afield where they got the opportunity to meet with likeminded individuals.

We attended conferences across the UK, UAE and Asia. These included BSME, ISBA, joint HMC IAPS Conference with the theme of Enlightened Education, EARCOS, Future Facing, COBIS, and AMCIS. We hope to see many of you when we are on the road again next year to talk all things EdTech, Independent Schools and education.

The full return of international travel for the team

After a pause in international travel this year we got to travel around the world. We visited many customers who we haven’t been able to see in years or ever in person. As a company we’re lucky to visit some of the most impressive schools in the world in the most extraordinary settings.

Some of the regions visited this year include the Middle East, South East Asia and Europe.

Take a look at some of the beautiful locations we have visited this year!

A new normal

Even though many of the WCBS team work across the country and some even further afield, this year we have seen the start of hybrid working with a return to the office after a long time away during covid.

To get the whole team together, the social team organised events such as the summer social, lunch clubs and Landmark Day, which are enjoyed by many whilst also an opportunity to reunite with colleagues from across the country.

We’ve also been figuring out how to make the most of this new normal, and now have the office open only 3 days a week, to improve togetherness on the days the office is open. This doesn’t mean we’re closed the other days, just still working remotely!

We’re not finished yet! 2023 looks like another exciting year at WCBS. We’re starting the year with the return of our in-person User Group Conference, with plans for more future events like this throughout the year… we will keep you updated! There will also be more development to the products you know and love, and more in the pipeline for the HUB platform, too, to provide the best possible EdTech offering for your Independent school.

We would like to wish you all happy holidays and new year. We hope you enjoy the holiday period and we look forward to catching up with as many of you as we can in 2023.

Holiday Announcement

WCBS will be closed over the holidays with the office and phonelines closing from 18:00 Friday 23rd December 2022 until 8:00 Tuesday 3rd January 2023.

We’re looking forward to speaking to everyone next year. As a company we would like to wish everyone a happy and safe festive period and a wonderful holiday and 2023.