Providers face many choices when embarking on the search for a solution that can help them scale their apprenticeship delivery. While standards and teaching styles differ, there are some constants across all apprenticeships that providers look for help in delivering. These include:

• The ability to smoothly enrol learners onto programme and complete pre-apprenticeship eligibility checks.
• The tools to deliver and track Functional Skills assessments.
• A learner portal, acting as a single place for the learner to access information and materials related to their apprenticeship.
• The facility to deliver eLearning content, including SCORM assets.
• Options for tracking learner progress and completing mandatory apprenticeship reviews to a high standard.
• Management of funding, helping you keep on top of your funding claims and prevent clawbacks.
• Data reporting and analytics, to give you an insight into how your provision is performing and how your learners are progressing.

If these requirements sound familiar, there are a few options you might consider:

• Spreadsheets and manual processes. This is understandably how providers often start when first joining the Apprenticeship Provider and Assessment Register (APAR), but it can prove difficult when looking to scale your provision, or keep up with stringent regulations.
• A collection of tools designed to support with a particular area of functionality, for example eLearning or ILR submission. While these products may perform well for each specific task, providers often find themselves managing multiple platforms and licences. This leads to struggling to keep data accurate and in sync across systems, and spending lots of time pulling data together for reporting.
• A bespoke build, in which providers create a system from the ground up to suit their requirements. While this gives the flexibility to design a system to suit your workflow, it can be costly to create and maintain. It may also be a challenge to keep the system up-to-date whenever changes are made to regulations or requirements around programme delivery.
• An end-to-end apprenticeship management system, which offers all of the functionality set out above, in one single place.

End-to-end apprenticeship management solutions

Providers often opt for an end-to-end solution for its:

• Simplified administration and user experience
• Enhanced learner experience
• Guidance and expertise of an experienced technology provider
• And peace of mind that compliance documents and data are kept in a single place.

You can expect most end-to-end apprenticeship software solutions to offer the features set out above in some capacity.

Aptem’s interactive dashboards surface the information you need to keep your learners on track

How does Aptem differ from other end-to-end solutions?

Aptem Apprentice takes compliance, employer engagement and learner experience to a new level, with a host of additional features to ensure successful apprenticeship delivery. These features, along with those that appear on our extensive product roadmap, are informed by the real-life needs of our community of almost 200 independent training providers, universities, employer providers and colleges.

These include:

1. Enhanced features to further support your apprenticeship compliance efforts.

• Our Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) calculator comes included as standard within our apprenticeship products. This helps you to assess and evidence the starting points for each of your learners, allowing you to adapt your programmes to better suit your learner and make accurate funding claims.
• Aptem Assess, our integrated cognitive assessment tool, can be offered to all learners on programme as part of their onboarding. It’s adaptive, so takes most learners no more than 15 minutes to complete. This valuable onboarding step helps you identify those with additional learning needs, then adequately tailor their programme and offer any support required.

2. Tools to help tutors and learners see progression in real time.

• Our Skills Radar can be used regularly throughout the programme. It captures the learners’ competency level and progression against the key Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours (KSBs) for their course. This can provide encouragement during the programme and support early detection where a learner needs further support.
• Assessment management and tracking is included within the platform. Aptem is a one-stop-shop for everything related to each learner and their time on-course. Having this information readily available provides valuable insight for tutors when reviewing how their learner is doing against learning targets.

3. The ability to easily tailor Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) for each learner.

• With Ofsted placing emphasis on the importance of personalisation of learning, it’s important to make sure you can offer a level of customisation in your learner programmes. Aptem offers the option to add to and edit a Learning Plan before and during the programme, to add additional materials, set further eLearning, and challenge learners with stretch tasks.
• Managing variation of programmes can be time consuming, but Aptem’s sub-programmes functionality significantly reduces the administrative burden. Elements of programmes that are not needed by all learners, for example Functional Skills or optional qualifications, can be created as sub-programmes. These can be added to the core delivery programme where needed, where they will display seamlessly within the Learning Plan for those selected learners.

4. Options to reduce administration through process automation and learner self-service.

• The automation of basic tasks within Aptem transforms efficiencies for apprenticeship teams. Aston University noted that ‘it used to take us weeks of chasing – often up to 40 phone calls and emails – to get one apprentice onboarded. Now pretty much the entirety of that process is automated and streamlined within Aptem. That’s an enormous benefit.’
• Self-service options include Aptem’s Resource Centre, where providers can add SCORM assets to help learners easily access the learning resources they need. Aptem also provides options for self-enrolment onto workshops.
• There’s no need for tutors to leave Aptem to find times and schedule calls with their learners- a Communications Connector with MS Teams makes it simple to schedule and run a call straight from the platform.

For providers with large numbers of learners or a diverse range of standards

Having large numbers of learners or standards means having large volumes of records to maintain. Aptem’s features are designed to ease this administrative burden and make it simpler to keep records up-to-date. For example, if a change needs to be made to a programme following a regulation change or other decision, providers can make these changes once in Aptem, and then sync this across all other selected records. Aptem also enables providers to create standardised programmes that deliver consistent high quality, whilst maintaining the flexibility to personalise learning journeys according to individual need.

We regularly consult with our customers to ensure Aptem’s strategic direction and roadmap is aligned to customer need. Having used Aptem since 2017, Corndel chose to renew their contract in 2022, citing Aptem as the best apprenticeship platform to support their ambitious plans and growth trajectory. Read our case study to find out why, after careful market analysis, Corndel came to the conclusion that Aptem was the best apprenticeship system for them.

For smaller providers looking to boost efficiency and consistency

We appreciate that investing in an end-to-end apprenticeship management system can seem like a significant undertaking, particularly for smaller training providers. Ensis Solutions found that ‘as a smaller provider, Aptem was a significant investment. However, we recognised that the time and cost savings that the system would bring would offset the implementation costs within the first year. We estimate Aptem is giving us back the equivalent of two salaries.’ Find our more about the benefits for Ensis in our case study.

In addition to the rich functionality that Aptem offers for apprenticeship management, the Aptem team brings extensive sector experience to each customer implementation, guiding providers throughout set up and advising on how to achieve the best outcomes. Find out how Aptem supported Resolve ASB in the early stages of apprenticeship delivery in our case study.

For providers offering degree apprenticeships

We’re proud to be the partner of choice for many providers offering degree apprenticeships. We have in-house Higher Education expertise, can count over 30 universities among our customers, and regularly hear that Aptem is the only solution that can manage the complexities of degree apprenticeships.

You can read our case study to hear about the impact Aptem has had for learner onboarding for London South Bank University. Their learners went from having to wait up to five months to start using an online apprenticeship management system, to having it available on day one of their programme.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Aptem’s tools for apprenticeship management and how we compare to other apprenticeship technology, book a demo to see the solution in action.