Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-01-31
Buyer: The University of Birmingham
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 48900000
Estimated value: 8000000 GBP

Technical requirements: This is a VEAT notice of the University of Birmingham's intention to award a contract. UoB intends to award contracts to Ellucian to July 2026 for the purchase of Banner software, technology and related services. Ellucian provide fully integrated student administration, admissions and HE software/support. UoB intends to augment these core applications with further functionality over the next 7 years. UoB has made substantial investment in the system in relation to infrastructure and staff skills/capabilities since it was installed in 1997. UoB identified that it needs to make substantial process improvements whilst maintaining current core business and do so in a manner that is achievable within capital and revenue budget and staff capacity. UoB is looking to retire a substantial part of its internal bespoke systems and replace it with core functionality from Banner to enhance functionality, business processes and efficiency.
The University of Birmingham intends to award contracts to Ellucian up to July 2026 for the purchase of Ellucian/Banner software applications, technology and related services. Ellucian provide fully integrated Student administration, student admissions and other Higher Education software and supporting technologies. The University of Birmingham currently uses Ellucian/Banner applications and intends to augment these core applications with further functionality over the next 7 years. The University has made a substantial investment in the Ellucian Banner System in relation to infrastructure, and staff skills and capabilities since it was installed in 1997. The University has identified that it needs to make substantial process improvements within the next 7 years whilst maintaining current core business and do so in a manner that is achievable within the University's capital and revenue budget and staff capacity. The University is looking to retire a substantial part of its internal bespoke systems and replace it with core functionality from Ellucian Banner to enhance functionality, business processes and efficiency.
The University of Birmingham intends to take advantage of the integrated nature of Ellucian/Banner to provide a consistent and holistic service for students and staff, to deliver value for money and to create a modern and future proof user experience. The University will also take advantage of the one platform approach to reduce the cost of integration, leverage the maximum amount of value from centralized data management and provide insightful business intelligence to University decision makers.
Improvements will include the purchase of additional modules along with the relevant support and maintenance. This will include consultancy services to help implement the additional modules to enable the University to take advantage of any resulting business benefits.
The University has identified that for the reasons stated above related to our existing skills sets, embedded use of these systems and the benefits related to a fully integrated approach, that the products, services and support supplied by Ellucian are the only ones capable of meeting the University's requirements. The required software has certain features benefitting from exclusive intellectual property protection which are essential for the requirements of the University and capable of ensuring compatibility with the University's current systems.
The products, services and support can be provided only by a particular contractor for reasons that are technical and connected with the protection of exclusive intellectual property rights. This VEAT notice is alerting the market of the University’s intention to award a contract via a sole source procedure and not via a competitive tender via OJEU. The University intends to award a contract for the above once a 10 day standstill period has ended. The 10 day standstill period will commence from the publication of this notice in OJEU.


Winner: Ellucian
Award value: 8000000