Securing Degree Certificates & Transcripts for the University of Westminster

About the University of Westminster

The University of Westminster is a vibrant and diverse institution that attracts more than 20,000 students from over 155 nations. It has been ranked 8th in the UK and 52nd in the world for ‘International Outlook’ by Times Higher World University Ranking 2022.

Established in 1838 as London’s first polytechnic, the University offers a range of highly attractive practice-based courses that are independently rated as excellent and has a distinguished history of research excellence in areas such as Politics, Media, Art and Design, Architecture, and Biomedical Sciences.

The University is committed to global engagement, employability and sustainability as key elements of its vision for the future and strives to ensure the very highest standards are met and maintained.

University of Westminster’s position before adopting Digital Certificates Solution and Blockchain Paper®?

“We used SITS to generate our certificates and transcripts, this method was slow and held up printing. We were not able to produce true electronic versions of documents, we either had to print documents and then scan them into adobe or create an email version, both were rendered poorly and could only be used during pandemic conditions. Processes typically created extra work, they increased the number of emails we received and put additional pressure on our resources due to each email request needing verification. We realistically could only provide hard-copy documents, these took many days to produce with the service taking longer for new graduates who could expect to receive their documents in the post weeks later”.

Certification challenges faced by the University of Westminster?

“Inefficient working practices- producing in-year graduate documents took 32 to 56 days for the UK and Europe, and 37 to 100 days for international documents (depending on the destination.) This generated enquiries that we could not answer in a reasonable time frame. The workload for document requests always outstripped our staffing resources.”

What has been the University of Westminster’s experience working with us?

“Very positive, Advance Secure Technologies worked well with the many departments required for us to develop and launch the new service. Meetings were regular as promised, and support was available outside the agreed schedule when needed. There were difficulties to overcome as expected with a large project, but the Advanced Team was always willing to meet and help us find solutions that suited our needs and budget.”

What are the key benefits gained from adopting our secure certification solutions?

“True digital versions of our degree certificates and transcripts, which can be shared directly from the Digital Certificates Solution with third parties by the student. This prevents complaints and enquiries from new graduates needing their documents to move on to the next phase in their lives, reducing inbox traffic for my team which has other responsibilities and services to deliver alongside certification.

Digital publication timescales are incredibly fast, 10 days from the publication of results. It could be faster but we wait one week for late awards and amendments before publishing the award documents. The work to move the data from SITS into Digital Certificates Solution and publish takes 2 days.

We need only 1 member of the team to complete the work. Under the old system, we could only print hard-copy documents and this took 18 days (not including postal delivery times, which was just to print everything) and required 4 members of my small team full-time for that period, to the detriment of our other services.

Hard-copy documents print faster from the Digital Certificates Solution system, 6 days for a full set and require 2 team members to complete. The adoption of Blockchain Paper® offers an added level of security, with advanced verification and high-level security features that confirm the authenticity of our secure certificate papers. This is an improvement over our previous certificate papers which did not have this level of security.

Digital Certificates Web auto-collates our papers, including an address label, cover letter, transcript, and certificate, all printed on different stock, which has led to significant time savings for our printing process. The papers are collated for each student, making the enveloping process quick with no reported posting errors so far. In light of our varied and global student body, we are really pleased to offer both secure digital and secure hardcopy versions of our student’s awards and achievements in a fast and efficient manner.”

About Advanced Secure Technologies

Since 2004, Advanced Secure Technologies has worked to STOP FRAUD for our customers. We lead the way in best practices and set a global standard for Secure Paper and Secure Digital Certificates. Our holistic approach to developing secure certification solutions features multiple layers of security across the issuing process. This ensures our customers remain ahead of the fraud risk. As a result, our innovative and high-security solutions protect the integrity of documents issued while safeguarding the reputation of over 200 education institutes worldwide.