““What I can say from experience of similar platforms at other universities, is that working with the developers at Symplicity from out of the box to a point where it was matching our internal processes and meeting our specifications, felt very easy and straightforward. Actually out of the box functionality felt quite intuitive.”
Kieran Brookes, Associate Director of Student Support, Norwich University of the Arts
Today, having Symplicity Advocate has significantly transformed the way Norwich University of the Arts now manages student interactions and service delivery. Before implementing Advocate, the university faced challenges in tracking and recording student engagement across various channels such as drop-in services, pre-booked appointments, walk-ins, phone calls, and emails. This manual process was time-consuming, relying on spreadsheets and calendar entries. However, with the introduction of Advocate's case management features, staff members can now efficiently record all student interactions directly into one system. This streamlined approach enables the university to accurately capture the volume of students being supported and provides valuable insights to make data-driven decisions with Advocate’s reporting functionalities.
“I can very quickly get a picture of demand over a defined period of time, see which of my student support advisors students are seeing and the type of case scenario,” Brookes told Symplicity. “And because we're categorising all of these appointments, we can see how many students are coming to our service for different things. So the ability to record all of our appointments in Advocate to categorise them and then to report on them has been incredibly powerful for us. It has helped me make decisions about resources and how we implement our service going forward.”
By analysing the data captured through Advocate, staff can identify trends in student support needs, determine which advisors are handling more cases, and assess the effectiveness of current service strategies. This newfound visibility into student interactions not only enhances operational efficiency but also enables proactive adjustments to service delivery models. Ultimately, Symplicity Advocate has proven to be a powerful tool for Norwich, enabling them to optimise their student support services, improve resource management and adapt their operations to better meet the evolving needs of their student community.
Having standout reporting access and metrics means that, “Everyone is much more clued up on individual students, particularly those who are vulnerable. We have a daily contact log, which staff can review to see exactly when the last interaction was, what happened and what was the outcome,” said Brookes.
“I can very quickly get a picture of demand over a defined period of time, see which of my student support advisors students are seeing and the type of case scenario. And because we're categorising all of these appointments, we can see how many students are coming to our service for different things. So the ability to record all of our appointments in Advocate to categorise them and then to report on them has been incredibly powerful for us. It has helped me make decisions about resources and how we implement our service going forward.”
Kieran Brookes, Associate Director of Student Support, Norwich University of the Arts
The implementation of Symplicity Advocate at Norwich has been a resounding success, marked by a collaborative and responsive partnership with the Symplicity team. “During the onboarding process, our client manager was extremely responsive and always gave new ideas and new perspectives to what we were trying to do, which was great." This level of engagement and support from the Symplicity team has been a hallmark of the university's experience.
Even as the university uncovered "head scratches" during the implementation process, the Symplicity team has demonstrated a commitment to working collaboratively to ensure the system meets the university's specific needs and encourages university partners like Norwich to contribute to the future development of Advocate. “Symplicity wants to clearly understand the landscape in which we are operating to make the platform work better for staff and students,” said Brookes. “Our overall experience so far is positive and I would urge people considering a case management solution to think about Advocate.” In the future, Norwich plans to work with the Symplicity support team to expand the functionality of Advocate to enable students to request appointments and launch other web forms for student engagement such as employability support.
“Our overall experience so far is positive and I would urge people considering a case management solution to think about Advocate.”
Kieran Brookes, Associate Director of Student Support, Norwich University of the Arts
Learn how Norwich University of the Arts leveraged Symplicity Advocate to track and record student engagement across various student services.
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