Student Loans Company appoints Atos as a Strategic Partner

London, UK and Paris, France, 11 September 2020 – The Student Loans Company (SLC) has appointed Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, to support the delivery of improvements to SLC’s customer interface and the associated technology infrastructure. Atos will support the development of its Customer Enablement Services, with focus on application development. This is the first stage of a multi-part procurement process to engage strategic partners across SLC’s technology group.

In February, as part of its on-going commitment to improving its service to customers, SLC launched a competitive procurement process to deliver a new strategic partner model. The new approach will see the organisation working with a small number of partners to develop, deliver and support its technology estate and digital services to customers.

The ambitious programme will transform the commercial framework and delivery models leveraged across SLC’s technology estate when working with strategic partners, developing enhanced capabilities while delivering better value for public money. 

Stephen Campbell, Chief Information Officer at SLC said: "We were greatly encouraged by the range and strength of responses from bidders in the first round of this procurement process. The appointment of Atos is the first stage in this process as we undertake an ambitious approach to work with a small number of strategic partners to develop, deliver and support our technology estate and digital services.

"This process reflects our commitment to improving the experience for our customers and we look forward to progressing with further procurements in the months ahead.”

Clay Van Doren, CEO, Atos UK and Ireland said: "We are excited by the prospect of our new strategic partnership approach with Student Loans Company to deliver the customer interface systems transformation it is seeking. This will elevate its service and overall offering while also ensuring that value is consistently delivered.”

Working in conjunction with its partners in the Department for Education, Devolved Administrations and the Cabinet Office, SLC has developed a procurement strategy that provides the most appropriate, compliant, public sector route to market for each lot within the programme, based on the complexity and stability of the in-scope services. The second procurement is expected to be released to the market later in September 2020.

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For further information contact the Student Loans Company press office on 0141 306 2120 / press_office@slc.co.uk
Notes to editors
The procurement exercise to appoint the first partner was conducted via the Crown Commercial Services’ (CCS) ePortal on Lot 4a of the CCS’s Technology Services 2 (TS2) framework agreement.

The Student Loans Company:
-      administers student finance on behalf of the UK Government and the Devolved Administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
-      has 9.4 million customers and manages a loan book in excess of £156.5 billion
-      processes almost 2 million applications for student finance every year
-      paid out £9.4 billion in loans and grants to new and existing students, as well as £10.5 billion in tuition fees to higher and further education providers in the last year
        -     employs over 3,400 staff across sites in Glasgow, Darlington and Llandudno Junction

About Atos
Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of € 12 billion. European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing, the Group provides end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications and Digital Workplace solutions. In the UK & Ireland Atos delivers business technology solutions for some of the country’s largest public and private sector organisations The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos|Syntel, and Unify. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Press contact
For more information, please contact Helena Shadbolt at helena.shadbolt@mhpc.com or on +44 (0) 203 1288799 or Nick Collins at nick.collins@mhpc.com or on +44 (0)20 3128 8897

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