“Bringing together organisations inevitably highlights duplications and challenges. From a technology perspective, one system was approaching end-of-life and 50% of the funding was being managed on excel spreadsheets. Whilst this was accurate it was in no way efficient. However, culturally, we also spoke different business languages with terminology which had completely different meanings depending on whether you came from EFA or SFA. Ultimately we were looking to stabilise and have a system that would be fit for purpose for the next 10 years.”