An independent study to investigate the value Ayrshire College gets from its Jisc membership.

1. Jisc’s value to FE:
Ayrshire College

2. Ayrshire College has
three main campuses in
Ayr, Kilmarnock and
Kilwinning, Ayrshire,
offering FE, HE and
apprenticeships.
It took part in an independent study to investigate the
value it gets from its Jisc membership.
This is what it discovered.
Kilwinning
Ayr
Kilmarnock
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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3. Ayrshire College’s Jisc
subscription* alone
saves the college
£318,000 of costs each
year – an ROI of 76%.
Add in the college’s use of
optional services and the
saving is £418,000
Here’s how
* If Ayrshire College were in England, its Jisc subscription for 2020/21 would be £37,632 and
all savings are based on this figure
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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4. Cyber security – headline savings
Ayrshire saves nearly £250,000 a year by using
Jisc’s cyber security support.
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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£54,343
In cost saving
£195,000
Cost avoidance
3 FTE
Without Jisc, Ayrshire would need
three extra cyber-skilled full-time
staff, which would be unaffordable

5. Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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Cyber security critical
service protection is a
good insurance policy

6. Cyber security - trust
Ayrshire College says it trusts Jisc‘s cyber security service
because it is:
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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Designed for the sector –
information, advice and
guidance is geared towards
FE vulnerabilities and
threats
Unique in terms of sector
focus, intelligence and
knowledge of sector-specific
attacks and threats.
Based on the Janet
Network, which is “high
quality and highly reliable”

7. Cyber security – context
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A cyber security-based outage would seriously impact teaching as far
more resources are now online.
Teaching
A four-hour
outage would
cause 683
hours of
teaching to be
lost
Impact
A 70-minute
attack on
Ayrshire College
(based on its
2019/20
attacks) cost
£232,260

8. Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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Secure connectivity is
of critical value – now
and into the future

9. Connectivity - savings
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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Ayrshire enjoys other connectivity-related savings:
eduroam
£33,000 (1 FTE)
The sector-wide federated service is heavily used and
especially beneficial for multi campus colleges.
Managed router service
£4,200 (24 days)
Ayrshire could not recruit to manage its own router
service. Jisc saves effort and fills a skills gap.

10. Learning resources - benefits
Jisc’s sector-wide negotiations also mean
Ayrshire College can provide more digital
resources to learners than it would otherwise be
able to:
 Chest Adobe software savings mean access to Adobe for many
learners, with some courses completely reliant on the software
 The vocational resources help curriculum and course development,
are being actively promoted and would be unaffordable without Jisc
 Jisc eBooks are easy to access, have accessibility features, reduce
the risk of losing stock and helped keep a consistent student
experience during Covid
 Jisc’s license subscription manager is “useful and straightforward”
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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11. Learning resources – headline savings
Jisc’s learning resources save Ayrshire College £137,30.
How?
Annual cost saving
Licensing £18,452
Jisc e-books £23,941
CHEST software £94,637
Totals £137,030
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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12. Trust and identity – benefits
Single sign on, enabled by Jisc’s federated
access, makes it as easy as possible for students
and staff to access learning resources.
For Ayrshire College it:
 Saves library staff time and effort that can be used
to support learners instead
 Provides more accurate statistics than the VLE,
helps to avoid unnecessary purchases, increases
access, enables smarter purchasing and supports
curriculum development
 Helps keep systems secure as it allows the college
to detect compromised accounts
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If we didn’t use
Jisc I don’t know if
we’d have the skill
sets to do it on our
own.

13. Trust and identity – headline savings
Annual effort / cost avoided
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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Federated access:
Library
183 hours /
£2,811
Federated access:
technology
80 hours /
£1,587
Certificate service £3,144
Federated access allows us
more time to spend on teaching
and learning support.
Totals
0.2 FTE /
£10,353

14. Student and staff experience
Ayrshire College values Jisc’s advice, guidance, events,
development and consultancy.
It also saved £21,000 of one-off costs and effort by using the digital experience
insights survey and the building digital capabilities framework.
Annual cost avoided One-off cost avoided
Digital experience
insights
£5,000 N/A
Digital capability
framework
£6,100 £21,000
Totals £11,100 £21,000
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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15. Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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Jisc is good at
everything from
tech support to
strategic ideas

16. Jisc’s value
For Ayrshire College, Jisc is not simply a supplier –
it is a trusted partner:
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“Jisc understands
FE”
“Jisc is reactive to
sector needs”
“Jisc always help
solve challenges”

17. Without Jisc…
“We’d spend more money to get the
currently sector-wide negotiated resources
or would have less choice.”
“We couldn’t afford the level of services
and if we wanted to maintain the same
level then other things in the college would
have to go.”
“Network and cyber reliability and the
sense of being protected would be lost and
concern and risk would increase.”
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18. Ayrshire College worked with independent
consultant Richard Hadfield to look at its
portfolio of Jisc services and analyse the
cost savings, costs avoided and the benefits
to learners, staff and the college as a whole.
Ayrshire’s senior managers, teachers, librarians, learning resource managers, IT and
finance staff took part in workshops and post-workshop meetings to share their views.
Together they agreed the findings.
Jisc's value to FE: Ayrshire College
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