Partner: Royal College of Art
Programme: Integration modernisation and capability uplift
PACT services: Integration architecture design, platform standardisation, strategic advisory, capability development, service design

Context

Founded in 1837, the Royal College of Art is the world’s largest community of postgraduate art and design students. With more than 2,500 students, 850 staff and 30,000 alumni worldwide, the RCA blends art, design, science and technology to shape global creative leadership.

As the College evolved, so too did its digital estate. A growing portfolio of SaaS platforms – including Workday, Pure, Unit4 and iTrent – required robust, secure and scalable integration to support core academic and professional services.

RCA needed a partner to stabilise live services, reduce risk and establish a modern, sustainable integration capability aligned to sector best practice.

The challenge

Over time, well-meaning but short-term integration decisions had created what the team described as an “architectural spaghetti map”.

Key challenges included:

1. Fragmented integrations with no consistent standards
2. Support commitments that had grown beyond what the team could sustain
3. Manual workarounds filling the gaps where automation should have been
4. No single owner and accountability spread too thinly across roles
5. Risk to live services and critical projects

Integration responsibilities were distributed across roles, methods varied, and there was no clearly defined integration function. As the College modernised its SaaS estate, this approach was no longer viable.

RCA needed to move from reactive integration delivery to a resilient, standardised and forward-looking architecture – while still delivering critical live projects.

PACT approach

PACT worked in genuine partnership with RCA, combining technical expertise with pragmatic delivery discipline.

Key elements included:

1. Platform standardisation

RCA had adopted Google Cloud Platform as its integration tool. PACT helped establish this as the standard integration platform, embedding consistent design principles and best practice patterns.

2. Immediate project delivery

PACT ensured that urgent integration requirements were delivered successfully, stabilising live services while longer-term improvements were designed.

3. Integration architecture & service design

We simplified and rationalised integration patterns, moving RCA away from tactical point solutions towards a more strategic, modern and secure approach.

4. Building internal integration capability

Rather than simply delivering integrations and leaving, PACT worked alongside RCA to build internal capability:

1. Establishing a defined integration function
2. Clarifying ownership and governance
3. Standardising ways of working
4. Embedding best practice design principles

5. Strategic roadmapping

With stability restored, PACT supported RCA in shaping a forward-looking integration roadmap, creating the foundations for AI readiness and a more structured approach to evaluating emerging technologies.

Outcomes and benefits

The partnership delivered both operational and strategic impact.

Operational improvements:

1. Fewer delays in integration delivery
2. Improved data quality
3. More reliable integrations
4. Reduced manual effort and workarounds
5. Greater resilience across core platforms

What changed at an institutional level:

1. A defined and growing integration function
2. Clear ownership and improved governance
3. Increased internal confidence and capability as the team takes on more complex work
4. A structured integration roadmap, giving RCA a basis for planning change rather than reacting to it.
5. Foundations in place for AI readiness, with the groundwork in place to evaluate and adopt new technologies.

RCA moved from fragmented, reactive integration delivery to a resilient, modern and scalable integration capability.

What our partners said:

“A history of well-meaning but short-sighted integrations has resulted in an architectural spaghetti map with an increasingly unsustainable support commitment.”

“PACT Solutions is born out of Higher Education and has lived and breathed the sector challenges of increasingly restricted resources and constant innovation.”

– James King, Director of Technology

“We’ve seen tangible improvements in how our integration services are delivered – fewer delays, better data quality and reliable integrations.”

“The bigger outcome is strategic. We now have a defined integration function that is growing in confidence and a stronger internal capability to support change.”

“PACT didn’t just come in and deliver some integrations then walk away. They really took time to understand the RCA challenges and strategic ambitions.”

“The main word I would choose to describe them is pragmatic. PACT understood our environment, our constraints and our complexity, and helped us make progress without over-engineering the solution.”

– Seema Kisnay, Deputy Director of Digital Products