Hughes Hall transforms a fragmented, manual admissions workflow into a secure, increasingly automated cloud-based platform – reducing risk, increasing efficiency, and improving applicant experience.
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Across the higher education sector, colleges and parent universities face similar strategic challenges: delivering a seamless student admissions experience, strengthening compliance and governance, reducing operational risk, and moving away from fragile legacy systems. Hughes Hall’s transformation illustrates how a moder, cloud-based platform can address these goals, providing a blueprint for other institutions seeking efficiency, insight, and scalability.
By replacing manual spreadsheets, email-based workflows, and a legacy portal with a single, secure, automated system, Hughes Hall and Valto have created a first of its kind platform that accelerates admissions processing while fully aligning governance expectations. As Hughes Hall put it: “This is the first of its kind. We’re paving a new pathway.”
Hughes Hall is one of the 31 colleges of the University of Cambridge, managing the full student lifecycle from application to senior membership. Each year, the college processes 700-1200 applications. Historically, the admissions process relied heavily on manual workflows, fragmented systems, and spreadsheets – leading to bottlenecks, duplicated effort, and compliance risk.
Many higher education institutions will recognise Hughes Hall’s pre-transformation challenges:
The Valto Student Admission Platform, coined ‘Athena’ by the college, is a bespoke Microsoft Cloud-powered platform that delivers a modern, secure, and centralised system for managing admissions and the full student lifecycle. The platform enables:
These outcomes result in a future-proof, cloud-managed platform that improves accuracy, speeds application handling, strengthens compliance, and supports broader college-wide digital transformation.
The Valto Student Admissions Platform is delivering clear benefits:
Hughes Hall leadership emphasises the solutions long-term strategic value:
“The Microsoft cloud powered platform will allow us to take the solution a step further by integrating Power BI to pull data and create custom reports and KPI dashboards.”
"What we’ve built will not expire. It will evolve. For Hughes Hall, this means Athena becoming one central system that connects all the systems used across the college through APIs. This is a real game changer and will revolutionise how we operate."
Harj Josen
IT Manager, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge
“Valto have gone over and beyond… they’ve gone the extra mile”
Valto’s partnership enabled Hughes Hall to move from spreadsheet-driven admissions to a secure, scalable, fully automated cloud platform, setting a new standard for the sector. Valto was said to deliver both within and beyond scope, whilst working towards ensuring systems are robust, compliant, and future-ready.
This breadth of expertise is underpinned by something rare in the market. As holders of all Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, Valto can manage your institution’s entire Microsoft environment from one place, removing vendor complexity and ensuring the same standard of care from first conversation to long-term support.
For peer institutions, the Valto Student Admissions Platform demonstrates how a single platform can provide visibility, insight, and governance that fragmented systems can’t match.
The Valto Student Admissions Platform is proof that higher education institutions can modernise admissions without losing control over data or compliance. By consolidating workflows, integrating authoritative student data, and automating processes, colleges can save time, reduce risk, and build insights to drive strategic decision making.
We work with universities and colleges across the UK to modernise the way they operate — reducing admin burden, improving staff experience, and delivering better outcomes for students. As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, we bring proven expertise in deploying technology that fits the way HE teams actually work.
Tell us about your challenges and we’ll show you how we can help.
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