Case studies

The scale of the AI opportunity is not in question for Close Brothers:  “AI is one of the most significant technology shifts of our generation,” says Yogesh Sholapurkar, Group CTO at the specialist banking group. The big question is, what would separate the organisations that successfully capitalise on that shift from the ones who watch it pass them by? 

“Those likely to succeed are the ones who combine the right technology with the right skill set,” adds Yogesh. “Which is why upskilling our workforce is such a strategic priority for us.”

Close Brothers Chief Executive, Mike Morgan, adds the commercial perspective: “Competitive advantage comes from helping your people learn, grow, and adapt to the possibilities that AI brings.”

And so the bank’s objective was not to deploy AI tools around the workforce, but to build a workforce capable of deploying AI in the right place at the right time. “Allowing it to work alongside our people and augment them in their day-to-day jobs,” says Mike.

Learn it in the morning, apply it in the afternoon

To achieve this, Close Brothers partnered with Multiverse to deliver a programme of data and AI apprenticeships aligned to the bank's Optimise and Grow strategic pillars.

The programmes run on two tracks:

• Raising everyday productivity by upskilling colleagues with M365 and AI tools.
• Training citizen developers who can build reusable AI solutions themselves.

Both rest on a foundation of responsible AI governance, and use an applied learning model, meaning courses are run inside working hours and participants' own real-world work forms the core learning material.

For Jay Palan, Enterprise Integration Practice Manager, this immediacy was the difference maker compared to other types of training. “Whatever I learned in the morning session, I was able to apply straight away in the afternoon,” he says. “Generative AI is more of a theoretical aspect, but here the hands-on aspect was quite significant and a game changer for our organisation.”

The curriculum pairs technical depth with the skills needed to convert that knowledge into impact. “I really enjoyed the soft skills part of it, the modules where you would develop your project managing skills or your time management or stakeholder engagement,” says Josefina Bourdieu, Senior ALM Analyst. “It's a fantastic way of learning new skills while doing the job.”

Deeper skills, broader capabilities, new career opportunities

The returns are showing up in what teams can now do, how widely they can do it, and where it takes them next.

• Value delivery at greater scale. “The programme's helping the team to develop more in-depth skills,” says Mike Morgan. “It's opening opportunities for them to deliver at scale compared to what we've originally been able to accomplish.”
• Broader data governance capability. Teams have dramatically enhanced their expertise across data governance and data security, according to Elizabeth Martine, Controls Design & Oversight Director — “which has really helped broaden their skillset.” 
• Stronger collaboration across the business. Elizabeth adds that, as a result, “they've been able to work together across the bank to really make things better in terms of capability and capacity.”
• Internal career mobility. Vicky Cousins joined the Data Fellowship programme from a role in operational excellence: “I was keen to move into a data orientated role. The apprenticeship gave me that confidence — I applied for a job as a data analyst and I secured the role!”
• A foundation for what comes next. “AI will be absolutely core to the process of building digital experiences and software applications to serve our customers' needs,” says Jag Bassi, Director of Technology Product. “There are going to be so many different opportunities of how we embed it into the business.

People-powered transformation

Mike is clear on the critical role the workforce will play in accelerating Close Brothers’ transformation, and the need to give them the skills to make it happen.

“You must move fast on this to engage the whole of your workforce, and you need to allow them to experiment,” he says. “That's critical here. Think of it as a business and a people transformation, not as a technology transformation.”

Evri moves around a billion parcels a year through more than 500 hubs and depots and over 30,000 couriers. Every one of those parcels leaves a trail of scan data showing where time is lost. But raw scan logs aren't routinely turned into the kind of operational view a depot manager can act on.

Recently, 30 Multiverse apprentices tackled that problem head on using AI. At Evri's Barnsley Hub, they spent a day turning a real, anonymised extract of 30,828 scan events from 4,000 parcel journeys into a performance benchmark, a working dashboard and a plan for making AI insights part of managers' daily routines.

Discovering where the network loses time, and how to get it back

Multiverse hackathons put apprentices to work in teams on a live problem from their own organisation, then have them present their findings to senior leaders.

There were two parts to the challenge facing Evri's apprentices, who were drawn from a cohort that spans HR, customer, delivery, commercial, sales, IT, planning, marketing, finance and operations.

First, they were tasked with benchmarking service performance across the network and explaining where and why it diverges between sites and service levels. Then they had to design how that insight reaches operational teams. Does it get there via an auto-generated weekly performance narrative, or a daily depot brief delivered by an AI agent? Is there an even better way?

Both aspects severely tested the skills apprentices had been learning during their studies. Speaking on the day, Maria De Maria, Multiverse Coach said: “They're going to use the skills that they've learned so far on the apprenticeship, but also learn from each other and learn new skills to solve real-life problems.”

“We're working on a solution that would improve the service we deliver to customers and also improve revenue protection,” added hackathon participant Andrius Žiukas, Enterprise Business Analyst at Evri and an AI apprentice.

Pitching to the top table

By the end of the day, the teams had produced a range of new insights and solutions, including:

• A benchmark showing where the network loses time, and which sites sit furthest from the average.
• An interactive Power BI dashboard built for daily operational use.
• An AI-in-the-flow-of-work concept, with responsible-AI guardrails and a clear value case

These outputs were presented to a panel of senior Evri stakeholders, including the Head of Intelligent Automation, Chief Data Officer and Chief HR Officer.

The panel treated the proposals as they would any internal innovation initiative, asking the hard questions necessary to decide which were worth taking further.

Because, as Harvinder Atwal, Chief Data Officer at Evri said, "Data only has one purpose, and that's to help you make better decisions. It's really important that we use that data to help us meet our customer and client needs."

The vision behind Evri’s upskilling strategy

The backdrop for the hackathon is Evri's vision to lead the way in creating responsible delivery experiences for everyone, everywhere, by investing in people and building a market-leading technology platform. The Multiverse programme, whose main cohort launched in April 2026 and which now has more than 60 learners, is designed to be the AI adoption layer that brings these two priorities together.

"The big thing we wanted to do with Multiverse as a partner was to take people who don't work in those specialist data or tech areas and help them to develop skills," said Lyn Warren, Chief HR Officer, Evri.

Back to the day job, upskilled and up to the challenge

Matt Watson-Power, UX Design Principal at Evri, is both an AI apprentice and a line manager. "I've been able to apply the things I've been learning to my role immediately," he said.

For Rasa Savickaite, Commercial Operations Manager and a data apprentice, the difference shows in routine work. "I noticed that I'm faster at completing day-to-day tasks, for example the reports I create every day," she said.

In that sense, the hackathon was the upskilling programme in miniature: learn a skill, apply it quickly to real business challenges, and build the confidence to get the result in front of the people who make decisions.

Long term, that will benefit both Evri and its people because, as Waine Greenway, Senior Business Analyst, Evri (AI apprentice) said: “AI is going to become part of our daily lives. I would rather embrace it and be part of that journey.”

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When Anvi Boulbouldjou asked the Oakdale Ward team at Harrogate District Hospital what was behind a spike in patient falls, he wasn’t satisfied with the “gut feelings” answers he got back. So he went digging into the data instead. The analyses that followed led to fewer falls, shorter emergency department waiting times and lower costs.

Anvi is a Quality and Cancer Performance Manager, and he was on a Data and Insights for Business Decisions (Level 3) apprenticeship with Multiverse as part of the Trust’s drive to develop the data and AI literacy of its workforce.

“We realised there were a record number of falls in July — 17,” he said. “I decided this should be my Multiverse project and started creating new Power BI dashboards, pulling more detailed data. Why do falls happen? When do they happen?”

The picture that emerged pointed to specific actions the team could take, and in six months falls were reduced to an average of two per month. “Oakdale became a trailblazer,” added Anvi. “Everyone wanted to learn about how they can achieve that in their own workplace.”

‍Learning built around the Trust’s biggest priorities

Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust has been upskilling staff in data and AI with Multiverse since March 2025.

“The Trust chose to use Multiverse because we were able to flex the programme to meet our needs,” said Jimmy Parvin, Deputy Director of Strategy & Improvement.

That means aligning its apprenticeships around the Trust’s four pillars: raising the digital baseline across the organisation, lifting its ceiling, improving patient outcomes, and reducing waste.

Forty one apprentices have joined the programme to date, drawn from clinical and non-clinical roles spanning wards, pharmacy, cancer pathways, safeguarding, and corporate teams. So far, 94% of those who have completed their studies have achieved a distinction, all while continuing in their full-time roles.

And this is part of a bigger NHS-wide shift. Currently around 2,800 people across the NHS are enrolled on Multiverse apprenticeships, working to drive digital adoption and improve how the NHS delivers care nationally.

From scared of spreadsheets to Power BI power user  

A patient’s fall is never just an isolated incident with isolated consequences, as Anvi explained:

“When a fall happens, it can actually increase the time a patient spends in hospital and this has a huge direct impact on our hospital capacity, and even with the emergency department waiting times. The financial impact of this is huge.”

Anvi broke that chain using data the hospital already had, and his story is all the more striking because of where he started.

“Power BI was a no-no word for me — I was even scared of Excel,” he said. “Creating Power BI dashboards was only possible because of the knowledge that I built on a Multiverse apprenticeship. Now I use them every single day.” 

‍Not just for analysts and managers

Carly Dodsworth, Head of Public Health Nursing and Operations, signed up for Data and Insights for Business Decisions (Level 3) after seeing what a colleague on the programme was learning. 

“The quality of their reports was just outstanding — it blew me away,” she said. “You might think, well, as a nurse, that's not applicable. But management and oversight of multiple teams means you're processing and digesting huge volumes of data.”

For her project, Carly took on the statutory ‘2 to 2½-year developmental review,’ part of the national 0-19 Healthy Child Programme and which the Trust delivers in Cumberland and Westmorland. At the start of 2025, only around half of children were receiving this review, against a national expectation of 90% and a national average of 75-80%. Uptake is now consistently above 90%.

“Prior to doing Multiverse, the data was shared within an Excel chart, and all that provided was high level data,” she said. “We needed to know much more than that, but there was very much a narrative from the team that they didn’t have capacity, that this wasn’t possible. Then I was saying, ‘It is possible and this is what it looks like: you use Power BI to translate that data and communicate it more clearly.’”

Cascading capabilities

From Oakdale Ward’s status as a trailblazer to Carly’s wish to emulate her colleague, the way capability is spreading through the organisation is a major source of excitement for Jimmy Parvin.

“There's a really nice cascade,” he said. “We're building capability in the organisation, both at an individual level where the learners have got skills that they can apply to their projects, but also to other parts of their business.”

The main beneficiaries, conclude both Jimmy and Carly, are the Trust’s people and its patients, which is exactly how it should be.

“Development is at the heart of healthcare because we're a people business,” said Jimmy. “It’s important in the broadest sense of developing people, to give them the opportunity to realise that being a better clinician is enhanced by being able to understand the data that's available to them.”

“It makes a difference to children and young people — it makes a difference to your teams,” said Carly. “It can put people on a different life path.”

If you’re the largest real estate company in the world, then you have a lot of data. “We have more data than any other real estate company,” said Ricky Bartlett, CBRE’s UK Lead for AI & Automation. “Upskilling our teams with the ability to analyse that data is essential.”

That ambition is the reason Multiverse apprentices from across CBRE recently came together for a one-day hackathon, organised around a single question: how can AI tools help reduce time spent on administrative tasks?

Learning by doing

Hackathons are a hallmark of Multiverse apprenticeships. Instead of learning in the abstract, apprentices apply their new AI and data skills to live business problems, working in teams, at pace and against the clock. Often they’re collaborating with colleagues they’ve never met, which is also part of the point.

“We've seen people who've never met each other before brought together on this common idea, and we've seen them collaborate so well and start to share ideas,” said Graeme McClelland, COO at CBRE. “That's really helped as we try and roll new ideas out across the organization.”

Less paperwork, more site work

The challenge of reducing time spent on admin was chosen because it’s a real — and persistent — pain point. In the facilities management industry significant time is dedicated to writing reports, coordinating contractors, updating systems and generating client updates. That’s time that could be better spent on spending time with clients and proactively responding to their needs.

Over the course of the day, teams designed practical AI workflows to claw that time back. Ideas the teams explored and developed included using AI to:

• Draft defect reports from photos or voice notes
• Auto-categorise work orders
• Generate client updates 
• Create summary dashboards 

George Whittaker, a duty manager, has enthusiastically embraced the apprenticeship programme and brought the same energy to the hackathon. “I enjoy AI — I'm Mr. Gadget,” he said. “I would like to automate everything. It'll give people time to focus on what they need to focus on.”

Others arrived with problems already in hand, and left with solutions. “I came to the event with an idea of an agent that I wanted to build that I've been hitting some walls with by myself,” said Alan Dunne, National Technical Manager. “Just as a byproduct of today, I've found a workaround to get past the blockers I've been seeing.”

Impact that benefits customers

For McClelland, the measure of success for the hackathon and beyond is simple: “If we’re delighting our customers, they want to keep working with us and we continue to grow. So anything we do with AI has got to be benefiting our customers.” 

And that’s a journey that CBRE isn’t making alone. “The challenge that we see around AI is the speed at which everything is changing — the landscape is shifting constantly,” concluded Bartlett. “So we wanted to work with somebody in a partnership to try and navigate what's going on with artificial intelligence. And we really do see that with Multiverse.”

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Four teams of apprentices, one day and 50,000+ data records — it must be a live data analytics hackathon, one of the most hotly anticipated features of our apprenticeships’ curriculums.

These challenges see learners take everything they’ve learned and put it to work in teams on a single, open-ended problem. They’re given a realistic scenario, real and relevant data and a question to answer. They then have just a day to clean the data, analyse it and present recommendations that they can defend.

We recently observed a hackathon in action for a cohort of data analytics apprentices from five colleges at Cambridge University.

Here’s how it unfolded.

A real question, real data

The teams were given a broad question to tackle on the day: which under-represented groups are being lost at which stage of the admissions process, and where should outreach be focused to close those gaps?

The dataset was exactly the kind that analysts meet in the real world: large and inconsistent. The team would have their work cut out wrangling a mix of different fields related to socioeconomic indicators and widening higher education participation flags, plus the stage applicants reached and the outcome they received.

Tackling this challenge would require them to flex all the data analytics skills they’d learned to date, using Excel and PowerBI to clean and visualise the data, communicate the trends they’d found and make some concrete recommendations.

Turning messy into meaning

The hackathon compressed the full analytics workflow into a single day. The teams started by cleaning the data, building structured tables, suppressing blanks, fixing inconsistent values and making judgment calls on which incomplete records to exclude. (Nobody ever said data quality was glamorous, but this is where the trust in everything that happens downstream is won or lost.)

Clean data in hand, teams moved to modelling and preparation. Using XLOOKUP they joined datasets on unique identifiers, summarised the data with pivot tables and built out their funnel and conversion-rate calculations.

The teams then used PowerBI to analyse and visualise the data interactively, and built Excel charts and dashboards to compare groups and surface patterns.

The final stage was to turn their analysis into insight and storytelling, and present their findings. By framing a clear problem statement and benchmarking against national data, each team had arrived at a strong set of evidence-led outreach recommendations.

And the process was complete: raw, messy data — the kind universities and indeed businesses — are swimming in, had been transformed into a board-ready proposal.

Fresh eyes, fresh connections

Part of what made the day work was the fact that many participants were analysing admissions information for the first time. Pushing people to test their skills outside of their day-to-day role helps to cement their learning, and gives them valuable experience to bring back to their regular jobs.

“It’s been challenging,” said Elizabeth McWilliams, a participant. “We were given admissions data, and I don’t work in the admissions department, so it’s been quite a steep learning curve.”

For Robert Fone, Senior Instructor at Multiverse, that fresh perspective was the point. “We’ve got people who’ve never seen this sort of data before, so they’re bringing new ideas that people who work with admissions data haven’t thought about,” he said.

The hackathon judges, senior stakeholders overseeing this aspect of the University’s apprenticeship programme, also reflected on the success of the day.

“They all came at it from very different angles,” said Fiona Hall, Deputy Head of Admissions & Data Services, and a hackathon judge. “It was interesting to see what they put together and that's obviously skills that they can bring back to their own workplaces, work efficiently and work smarter with the data that they've got.”

“This is absolutely silo busting activity,” added Owen Roberson, University Data Lead and a judge. “This is about getting people to make connections that are unintuitive.”

The skills that stick

The real success measure of a hackathon is always what participants take back to their desks afterwards.

For this cohort, that is a repeatable way of taking a messy dataset — any dataset — and turning it into something that decision-makers can act on.

Whatever data they come across next, these apprentices are ready to make it work for them.

Across the NHS, the shift to a more digital, AI-enabled future is the defining challenge of the decade. Meeting it depends less on the technology itself than on the people who use it — and especially on whether they have the skills to turn data into better decisions and better care.

Barts Health NHS Trust set out to build those skills from within. Its data and digital apprenticeships, delivered in partnership with Multiverse, are designed to do exactly that. And now the Trust is celebrating the graduation of its first cohort: more than 150 clinical and operational staff now have the practical data skills they need to tackle the frontline problems they know best. (With a massive 71% achieving Distinction so far.)

Building data skills from the inside out

The apprenticeships were designed to build critical skills across Barts Health and the hospitals in its Trust. Its core aims were to:

• Improve data skills in ways that benefit patient outcomes, directly or indirectly 
• Empower people to make data-driven decisions, break down data silos and identify cost savings
• Reduce time spent on manual processes and duplicated work
• Invest in employees to unlock future talent and retain high performers

“We want to make sure everyone has the right skills they need, and an apprenticeship is a great way to do that,” said Kieran Kelly, MD, Education Academy.

The early results bear this out. Learners in all departments are seeing impact through greater efficiency, with some quoting a 40-50% reduction in administrative workload — that means more time for patients.

Solving the problems they know best

On graduation day, a doctor who completed the programme described adding coding to his skillset, with transformative results for the daily running of his ward.

“As a doctor, coding is not part of my skillset, so I certainly needed a lot of support,” said Dr Konstantinos Dimitriade, a paediatric intensive care consultant. “The nursing day book is a literal book — we can only write and edit it so many times before it becomes completely illegible. So we created a small application to automate it and flag which upcoming shifts might run into problems, so we can mitigate staffing issues. That lets nurses spend more time with patients, where they want to be.”

The apprenticeship helped another learner, working in patient safety, tackle a seemingly intractable problem: how do you measure something as complex as safety culture?

“In my work, I realised data skills were absolutely essential, so I took the opportunity to become a Level 3 Data Analyst,” said Dr Annie Hunningher, Consultant Anaesthetist. “Safety is notoriously difficult to measure. I pulled together three years of data and built trends from it. Now we can use the dashboard to problem-sense — an area where safety culture is poor will flag, and we can prevent harmful incidents before they happen. It saves time and saves harm, by showing us exactly where to put resources and support. It’s a genuinely new way of understanding safety within our organisation and beyond.”

For other learners, the change has been one of mindset as much as method.

“When we think about data, we picture something we have to sit down and spend a lot of time analysing. But this course taught me that putting a bit more time in at the start to set up reports means I can work smarter,” said Vivian Wong, Service Lead Pharmacist. “Part of my job is managing a very busy chemotherapy unit, and the tool I’m building will help us manage the rising number of patients we’re seeing — and ultimately, improve our chemotherapy wait times.”

Skills that last a career

These stories show the Trust’s wider ambition in action: building data skills that make a real difference to patient outcomes, directly or indirectly. The lasting change the apprenticeships have unlocked is creating value that reaches far beyond any single project.

“The feeling of success I’ve had when I’ve worked something out that a year ago I wouldn’t have understood has been absolutely amazing,” said Dr Hunningher. 

Vivian added: “The skills I’ve learned will be lifelong. They’ll change my approach and how I work for the rest of my career.”

Barts Health set out to build its own data and digital future. Its first graduating cohort shows what becomes possible when an organisation backs its people to grow. And for these graduates, it’s just the beginning.

QS helps universities and business schools worldwide identify, shape and deliver data-driven strategies that secure their futures in a rapidly changing sector. But the company’s leadership knows that sustaining its competitive edge depends on something more than data. It depends on people.

Ben Sowter, Senior Vice President for the Sector Intelligence Division, puts it plainly. “This is a people business,” he said. “Your team is only as good as its collective capabilities and the relevance of those capabilities. AI makes it possible for a small group of people to catch up and potentially overtake a large, historically successful organisation like us. So it’s vital that we disrupt ourselves before somebody else does — by upskilling our people to keep them on the crest of that wave of change.”

A broad base of skills — and the people to match

QS has drawn on programmes from across the Multiverse portfolio to embed data and AI confidence at every level of the organisation. Dr Hannah Gore, Head of People (EMEA, US & Global Contractors), has seen the impact first-hand.

“Diversifying our apprenticeship portfolio – and ensuring a diversity of people on the programmes – has made a massive impact,” she said. “Apprentices aren’t building skills for the end of the course, they’re applying them from the very first workshop. Learners are drawn from across marketing, product, data, analytics and project management, all of which now engage with data and AI in new and unique ways. And nearly 60% of our apprentices identify as female, which is hugely significant in a STEM field where they’ve been historically underrepresented.”

“Thanks to all this diversity we’re seeing the benefits ripple out across QS, with people sharing knowledge, driving efficiencies and acting as natural ambassadors. Line managers are now queuing up to ask us: can I get more of my team on the programme?”

The results have captured the attention of senior leadership. Every apprentice who has completed the programme to date has achieved either a distinction (80%) or a merit (20%), and the business has realised over £675,000 in cost savings through improvements in data input, processing and automation.

“The ELT have fully embraced the programme — they can see the savings, the streamlining, the new ideas coming forward,” added Dr Hannah. “We’re seeing these benefits build year on year, and in fact apprentices’ applications of AI are already shaping how we think about future workflows.”

Learner impact stories

BeiBei Xiong, Product Manager

BeiBei joined the AI for Business Value programme to stay ahead of a rapidly changing skills landscape, and to ensure she could shape AI’s impact on her role, not the other way around.

“I thought, it’s better to be someone who knows how to use AI than someone whose job is at risk from it,” she said. “The most impactful skill I’ve gained is using AI to create product mockups. Work that used to take weeks — sometimes months — I can now do in real time with stakeholders in the room. It’s ten times faster than before.”

Serena Ricci, Senior Growth Marketing Manager

Using her project time on the Data Insights for Business Decisions (DIBD) (L3) programme, Serena transformed QS’s prospect engagement strategy — and earned a promotion in the process.

“I uncovered a huge proportion of our database that was unengaged,” she said. “The skills I’d gained let me escalate this to leadership in a structured way and bring together cross-functional teams to agree on a new lead acquisition and engagement strategy. The resulting behavioural marketing approach moved us from a 30% engagement rate to 80% year on year, with a tenfold forecasted impact on revenue.”

“The analytical and strategic thinking skills I developed made me a stronger asset to QS. My scope expanded well beyond traditional marketing responsibilities, and it soon became clear that I needed a promotion to reflect this.”

Mustafa Mitashar, Institutional Support Specialist

Mustafa’s role already involved working extensively with data, but the DIBD L3 programme gave him the tools to automate processes he’d long taken for granted.

“With Multiverse, I could apply what I was learning immediately — trial and error happening in real time,” he said. “I’d grown comfortable with the tools I was using, and I wanted to challenge myself. The automation skills I learned cut the time it takes me to gather data for our rankings work by more than a week, which enabled us to expand our rankings and increase the number of institutions covered by 40%.”

Skills as competitive advantage

As the higher education sector faces an era of closures, mergers and consolidation, QS’s ability to help institutions navigate uncertainty has never been more important. Ben Sowter believes the capabilities being built with Multiverse are central to that mission.

“We have, I would argue, the strongest competitive intelligence set anywhere in the world,” he said. “But our reputation with universities is based less on the quality of our data and more on the capability and impact of our people. The skills we’re building with Multiverse are ensuring we extract maximum value from the market intelligence data we hold.”

Ben also believes that by investing in upskilling QS has become more sophisticated in its thinking around data and AI. He said: “That’s visible in how our AI strategy has rallied around shared tools that let different teams collaborate and transfer knowledge more effectively, while staying curious about what’s coming next. This further strengthens our position as the best in our field.”

A partnership built on shared goals

The success of QS’s apprenticeship programmes is rooted in a close working relationship with Multiverse — one defined by shared metrics, regular contact and a deep understanding of QS’s business objectives.

Dr Hannah Gore: “We’re always in close contact with the Multiverse team, tracking metrics, reviewing feedback and making sure the programmes are as successful as possible,” she said. “The sessions they run with apprentices and their line managers give everyone clarity on what’s involved and how the learning fits around work. And because apprentices can apply what they learn straight away, they find the time investment becomes increasingly manageable with every workshop.”

 That success of the partnership has not gone unnoticed outside of QS. The company has been shortlisted for a Best Employer award at the Apprenticeship Guide Awards, and Dr Hannah Gore has been shortlisted for the Leadership in Apprenticeships accolade.

“The awards are a brilliant opportunity to showcase what our apprentices have achieved, and they cement our belief that we’re delivering world-class professional development here at QS with Multiverse,” she said.

Providing education and employability

Buckinghamshire New University (BNU)’s mantra is: ‘Where education meets employability.’

To achieve this, the university highlights that its role as an educator and an employer must go hand-in-hand.

“Learning should be hard, everything else that sits around the university should be easy. But university systems are notoriously complex and bureaucratic. So, it’s about breaking that down. That’s why we measure ourselves not against other universities, but companies that do it really well.” – Damien Page, Vice Chancellor

The university has set three goals across its students, research and talent.

• Students: Enhance student experience and drive growth, while retaining its 84% student satisfaction score. 
• Research: Unlock new revenue streams and institutional capabilities by developing the data proficiency required to expand the university’s research output. 
• Staff: Promote employee satisfaction, increase talent and foster digital inclusion by upskilling staff to thrive.

All three goals require a certain level of digital literacy for employees to deliver. So, building on the university’s partnership with Multiverse and the launch of its Data and AI Academy, BNU is expanding its upskilling activities to enable scalable growth, create high-quality experiences and strengthen data ownership.

“If we want to increase student outcomes, we have to increase the development of our colleagues.” – Damien Page, Vice Chancellor

In partnership with Multiverse, BNU has launched a range of data and AI courses for employees across marketing, student recruitment, academic registry, and digital and technical services. 

Improving student experience starts with data quality and digital literacy

With students now accustomed to seamless, consumer-grade experiences – from the likes of Amazon to banking apps – the university is looking to brands and companies as its competition for digital services, not other universities. 

Delivering on this ambition means enabling personalised, reliable and frictionless student journeys that meet consumer-level expectations. For example, identifying opportunities to improve timetable distribution for new students.

Yet, the university’s ability to report – from statutory reporting, to Nexus Student Management and enabling its ‘Digital Campus Vision’ – is challenged by its access to quality data. And the problem is two-fold, with limited data literacy skills across the organisation impacting the full lifecycle of data, from input to extraction and insights. 

In partnership with Multiverse, BNU is training staff on advanced data skills to reduce its reliance on manual reporting – such as spreadsheets – but so it can improve the student application experience and drive growth.

“Upskilling staff at our university is really important for our vision of a digital campus. Because we want to create a digital environment that’s accessible, inclusive and empowering. Staff and students can only take advantage of benefits if they have the right skills to operate inside of it.” – Nicholas Roussel-Milner, CIO

Learner impact

Case Study: Revolutionising NHS Compliance Reporting

The Challenge

A critical NHS compliance report at BNU required ten hours of manual Excel work per cycle. The process was labor-intensive and carried a high risk of human error due to manual data entry and fragmented datasets.

The Solution

Following training with Multiverse, Nicoleta Buzea, Returns Support Officer, initially automated the workflow in Power BI, cutting reporting time by over 50%.

Building on this success, Nicoleta has since scaled the solution into a reusable Power BI template. Key technical enhancements include:

• Automated Data Transformation: Leveraging Power Query to handle data preparation and postcode logic, eliminating the final manual steps of the pre-upload process.
• Advanced Analytics: Developing complex DAX measures to provide instant insights into key demographics (ethnicity, disability, age, and gender).
• Enhanced Data Integration: Merging employer and placement data to provide a richer, more holistic view of the student landscape.

The Impact

The refined dashboard now functions as a scalable, "refresh-ready" tool. By automating the most granular steps of the workflow, Nicoleta has ensured that each reporting cycle is consistent, accurate, and actionable, drastically reducing manual intervention while empowering stakeholders with dynamic trend analysis.

“Nicoleta’s work… is already bringing benefits… which has already seen added efficiency in terms of the time taken to compile and assure the core data.” – Jeremy Dye, Head of Statutory Returns at BNU

Empowering employees with a BNU-owned digital, data & AI model

To enable its Digital Campus, the university needs to leverage technologies such as AI. 

"Data is the blood of the organisation... it needs to be managed like an asset." – Nicholas Roussel-Milner, CIO

The university has set out to improve its ability to forecast demand and optimise recruitment and conversion and scale operations, without incurring costs. Together with Multiverse, BNU is working to improve control over institutional data and student experience.

“We want to make university as easy to access and as easy to get through as possible, while making sure the learning stays hard.” – Damien Page, Vice Chancellor

“I found working with the coaches to be a really positive experience. They really support you, challenge you. They’re empathetic and they provide useful feedback in the progress reviews.” – David Woolley, International Admissions Manager

Hear David’s story in the video at the top of this page.

Multiverse learning in action

Measuring learner impact is a critical part of any upskilling initiative. But, for BNU, demonstrating the delivery of tangible benefits is paramount to measuring itself against companies – not other universities.

That means giving employees the skills to apply on-the-job and instantaneously alongside their learning. By enabling those being trained to find relevant ways to apply their learning, this also creates tangible impact early on as employees progress through their courses.

“Using apprenticeships for growth and development is such a great opportunity, not only because you get a qualification – you get external support and the social learning aspect is really good – but also you apply your learning almost in the moment. You learn something in a workshop, and then you are literally doing it in your day job. The practical application is almost instant.” – Rachel Hemingway, People Development Partner

Want to find out how data and digital literacy skills could help your organisation? Chat to an expert.

The goal: Nurture future leaders

Now more than ever, employers need cost effective, alternative solutions for attracting and retaining talent from a diverse range of backgrounds.

With the size of the talent pool shrinking and the demand for digital skills rising, leadership at Hargreaves Lansdown decided to invest in developing talent needed for the future of the organisation.

The solution: Build relevant, in-demand skills

With a clear vision and commitment to learning, Hargreaves Lansdown introduced the Software Engineering, Digital Business Accelerator, and Business Transformation Fellowship programmes.

"As part of our transformation, we recognise the increasing need to develop digital and data skills. We decided to explore apprenticeships as a route to address the growing need for new talent across the OMNI channel and attract a different demographic of colleague"

Apprentices enrolled in Multiverse programmes represent a variety of experience levels and backgrounds across multiple departments, including Operations Support, Payments, and Product Development.

Each programme focuses on different skill sets, ranging from change management and advancing digital initiatives, to full-stack engineering to improve customer experience platforms.

"I feel I have a sense of belonging at Hargreaves Lansdown with the relationships I’ve built between my peers and other teams. Its let me grow in confidence, but also given me the opportunity to train new members in my team, which I didn’t even think I’d be able to do when I started."

The result: Application of core skills across the business

Apprenticeships have already yielded major results for Hargreaves Lansdown, creating a stronger culture of learning and development, and demonstrating the impact of applied learning.

"This apprenticeship has allowed me to explore the different paths available and find something I truly love and feel excited about. Thanks to the dedicated support from Multiverse and Hargreaves Lansdown, I can see the positive changes that I’m bringing to the workplace every single day."

Apprentices at Hargreaves Lansdown are supported by the daily application of newly acquired skills, in addition to personalised support from expert coaches, peer networking events and more.

"The Business Transformation Fellowship has been helpful to me at this stage of my career, after transitioning into a Transformation role. I’ve picked up specific skills from data modelling to managing conflicting requirements that are directly applicable to my day-to-day role. The engagement with my coach has been fantastic. It’s really powerful to get an external view and to have my thinking challenged."

All enrolled apprentices say they feel supported in their apprenticeship, and that Hargreaves Lansdown is an inclusive place to work. 100% of apprentices also say they receive support from their line manager in their day-to-day role.

The goal

Jaguar Land Rover had three main objectives for their upskilling efforts:

• Equipping employees with the knowledge and skills needed to identify opportunities to reduce costs and increase revenue.
• Building a data-driven culture that knows how to apply and leverage data in various scenarios – with the ultimate goal of increasing productivity and efficiency across the business.
• Increasing employee satisfaction and engagement by investing in skills development.

The solution

Jaguar Land Rover launched the Multiverse Data Fellowship programme to equip employees with the skills needed to become experts in data analysis, modelling and machine learning.

There are currently 600 Jaguar Land Rover employees on a Multiverse Data Fellowship programme across every department in the organisation, including Manufacturing, Product Engineering, Finance, Transformation, Supply Chain and many more.

"The Multiverse data programme has transformed our company's ability to harness the power of data, enabling us to make better decisions, innovate faster, and stay ahead of the competition. Our workforce is now equipped with the skills and knowledge to unlock valuable insights and drive real-world impact across our entire organisation. Multiverse has been an essential partner on this journey, and we look forward to continuing to work together to realise the full potential of our data-driven future."

The results

Identifying opportunities to increase efficiency

After six months on the programme, Data Fellowship apprentice Kamil Poreda was able to identify production inefficiencies by creating a Tableau dashboard for Production Leads. These insights into the efficiency of the manufacturing lines have resulted in the production of 600 extra cars per week.

Increased productivity and efficiencies

Another apprentice, Huijie Ma, utilised Tableau to create dashboards reporting on the electrical diverts from manufacturing. This solution helped save Huijie and her team four hours a day, which equates to 85 hours saved per month.

The reports revealed the root causes of the divert, allowing ownership to be traced back to the specific functions, production lines and work groups, which created an opportunity for an efficient process of divert reduction.

Increased employee satisfaction

The Data Fellowship programme has also supported driving employee engagement - an incredible 100% of apprentices agree the apprenticeship aligns with their professional and personal goals.

"The apprenticeship has given me so much confidence. I am now far more structured in how I approach my work, taking the time to scope out projects with relevant stakeholders to understand their needs fully."