The Access Group

Access Education People

Modern, intuitive, cloud based HR software designed specifically for schools, academies and Multi Academy Trusts. Access Education People combines the latest technology with HR best practice using a secure, flexible and scalable platform for your People data and processes with the option of an efficient UK based managed payroll services.

Features

• Cloud HR software
• Option to add managed payroll service or inhouse payroll software
• Mobile enabled manager and employee self service
• Holiday and sickness absence management
• Training, learning and development and appraisals
• Recruitment, applicant tracking, candidate portal
• Expenses and mileage claims
• Reporting, dashboards, business intelligence, management information
• Workflow
• Accessed via Access Workspace for Education with powerfull aps

Benefits

• Provide a responsive and engaging experience for your People
• Make HR information readily available, support better decision making
• Elimination of duplication and reduction of administration time
• Help Improve the HR service to employees
• Support you in maintaining compliance
• Reflect your school brand across your HR system
• Be flexible to changing needs of schools and MAT's
• Centralised employee database
• Consolidated view of Multi Academy trust

£1.50 a user a month

• Education pricing available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at tendernotifications@theaccessgroup.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

200336934641317

Contact

Access UK
01206322575
tendernotifications@theaccessgroup.com

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
• What software services is the service an extension to: Access Education Payroll, Access Workspace for Education, Access Education Finance, Access Education Budgets
• Cloud deployment model: Public cloud
• Service constraints: None.; ; For information, Routine Maintenance is undertaken on 4th Tuesday of each month at 3.00 AM UK
• System requirements:
  • IE 10+, Edge, Firefox, Chrome or Safari (latest version)
  • Mobile Iphone, Windows Phone, Andriod
  • Open ID Connect for Single Sign on

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: We use an automated ticket system to record customer case detail and an acknowledgement email is sent to the customer immediately upon receipt
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support accessibility standard: None or don’t know
• How the web chat support is accessible: WCAG 2.0 AA
• Web chat accessibility testing: The webchat software is currently being widely used across multiple other divisions within the Access Group
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: The Essential Success Plan is included as part of your Access subscription, and is there for you online anytime of the day or night with access to our Knowledge Base and Community. The Standard Success Plan is a more reactive service including telephone and email support, speedy response times and access to our lovely customer success teams. You’ll also get the chance to be involved with exciting product updates and webinars from our team of experts. The Standard Success plan is 15% of the annual software cost per annum. The premier Success Plan delivers a proactive service including your very own support contact and a customer success manager who will get you on the road to success and help you stay there. The Premier Success plan is 25% of the annual software cost per annum.
• Support available to third parties: No

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We believe wholeheartedly that the functionality that our software offers our customers is very important, but it is only half of the value equation, how the system is rolled out is critical if full value from your new investment is to be achieved. We also know that you may view new software implementations with some trepidation and many customers can find this period daunting. In fact for some customers, this may be the first software roll out they have managed. We recognise this and we have designed our implementation services to help ensure you have a great experience and are looked after along the way, so that the whole process is less daunting… this is our FlightPath implementation approach which includes scoping, data migration and training
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: The Enterprise has a built in Data Export tool. This allows clients once trained to be able to define and export data from the application. Additional consulting services are available if required
• End-of-contract process: Data extracts can be arranged as part of our consulting services ; ; The Enterprise has a built in Data Export tool. This allows users once trained to be able to define and export data from Access Education People.; ; In addition, if required, Access as part of a technical consulting engagement can assist clients in defining and building such a data export. This would be subject to specification and the prevailing consulting fees would apply on a time and materials basis.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
• Application to install: Yes
• Compatible operating systems:
  • Android
  • IOS
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: The full Access Education People user interface can be accessed on a Tablet sized device, The Mobile module provides a optimised user interface on a smart-phone sized devices, using HTML 5 technologies. This provides a simplified interface. While the functions that are made available can be controlled from the System Administrator function, we would recommend this UI being used for the more detailed functions in our system.
• Service interface: Yes
• User support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Description of service interface: There is an interface between the HR and Payroll solutions
• Accessibility standards: None or don’t know
• Description of accessibility: There is an interface between the HR and Payroll solutions
• Accessibility testing: We would be happy to share this with you upon request and discuss working with you and your requirements
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: The API is availble with the Enterprise edition. It is an employee detail based REST web service that enables third-party products to get employee data from Access Education People.; ; The third-party products are able to request a date range of employee changes through web service. Once Access Education People has received this request, it sends out a set of specified information to the 3rd party product. The data exposed is a set of completely configurable fields, which can be defined using the tool.; ; Initially the tool is designed to be used by our implementation team, however as part of an initial engagement training can be provided to the client to enable them to use the tool on a ongoing basis. The tool is a development level tool so in addition to having being trained on the HR application, users should also be competent / accredited on SQL Server, IIS, as well as having experience developing integration with APIs.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: PDF
• API sandbox or test environment: No
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: We always engage with our customers to deliver software that will really benefit their school or multi academy trust and we would welcome the opportunity to work with you on how we can customise our products even further to meet your specific needs.; For any customisation a scoping session will take place to identify best practice. Within the training provided by Access Education People, customers will learn the basis of customisation in respect of creating hierachy, roles and permissions ensuring that access is customised accordingly. Access Education People will offer support and advise for any questions that may arise. ; Customised work such as additional functionality will be completed by Access HCSS Peoples development team. A charge may apply for the dependant on complexity.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: Access Education People is a load-balanced, multi-tenant service. The load balancer monitors the web servers continuously and will dynamically reassign requests if one of these servers crashes.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: For Enterprise Edition User Login and Processes undertaken, workflow activities are recorded in the system. In addition to viewing the logs through the system administrator, these activities can be analysed through the system Business Intelligence tools. These can be used to identify utilisation around the system, as well time taken on key processes. This can help identify how well the system is being adopted across your organisation
• Reporting types: Real-time dashboards

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: Within Access Education People there are a number of standard reports that can be extracted into a variety of different formats such as word, excel, pdf, powerpoint to name a few. Reports can be duplicated and edited to ensure that the selection criteria is as required. Roles and Permissions are used to identify who has the relevant authorisation to run and extract the reports.; ; Customisable reports can be created by customers or alternatively Access offer a consultancy service should there be a high level f complexity required.
• Data export formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data export formats:
  • XML
  • PDF
• Data import formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data import formats: Xlsx

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: We will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the SaaS available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except for unavailability during emergency or routine maintenance. Our monthly availability has not dropped below 99.8% in any 4 week period in the last 12 months.
• Approach to resilience: The Access Hosting solution has been designed to enterprise level with the highest possible specification for resilience and replication. Split across 2 of the UK’s premium data centres, the solution delivers replication and recovery options that are unrivalled in the mid-market arena. ; The solution operates in a near continuous state across both datacentres minimising data loss in the event of a total data centre blackout. This is achieved using Zerto Virtual Replication and VMWare vSphere being delivered as a service to the Access user. ; The solution has been designed so that there is no hardware single point of failure. Dual Firewalls are used to connect to dual switches, SANs and Physical Hosts. Internet connectivity is protected using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) ensuring connectivity in the event an outage of an upstream Internet Service Provider occurs.; The Physical hosts run VMWare ESX and operate within a VMWare vSphere cluster. One cluster node is located in Telehouse with the second in Equinix.; The use of these technologies ensures that storage and virtual machines are resident in both datacentres giving maximum flexibility in the case of a disaster.
• Outage reporting: Users can subscribe to email alerts giving updates on scheduled maintenance and outages. An online portal is also available to clients

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: We operate role profile based Access Control - based on least privilege access. This applies to all our services
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: ISOQAR
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 01/09/2014
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: Nothing is excluded from the Standard
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: All controls included within Annex A of the ISO27001:2013 standard.; Statement Of Applicability (SOA) available on request.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: All change management is undertaken in line with ISO27001:2013 using JIRA for audit purposes.
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: Patched and audited by our patch management system. All non-critical OS patches are applied within one calendar month of release, first into pre-production and then into production, as part of the scheduled maintenance window.; AV Updates - Signatures are updated hourly. / Rules are reviewed at minimum every 3 months. Logs are reviewed at minimum every 3 months. ; Access staff responsible for the maintenance of our hosting services subscribe to industry newsletters, belong to various security forums and we additionally receive notifications from our vendors.
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: We have traffic monitoring and content based alerting which alerts on changes to the site and/or traffic flows implemented at infrastructure and application level. We proactively monitor third party suppliers (hardware, OS, application/web and database server software) vulnerability reporting and security fix availability. ; Any vulnerabilities found and fixes provided by third party suppliers are patched by our infrastructure team in a timescale appropriate for their level of severity. Any penetration test findings are fixed by Development in a timescale appropriate for their level of severity. Our infrastructure response is within 1 hour in the SLA period 8am-8pm Monday – Friday.
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: We operate a robust incident management process in line with ISO27001:2013 ; Staff are encouraged to report all incidents using a pre-defined process using a form available on our Company Collaborate site; Incident reports will be provided following forensics and closure

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: Yes
• Connected networks: Joint Academic Network (JANET)

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  Access UK Limited is a Software author and provide associated services, including Hosting, Payroll Bureau and Payment services. We recognise that although we do not undertake manufacturing, our day to day operations will have impact on the environment at global, national, and local level. We are committed to the care of the environment and the prevention of pollution. •Access ensures that all our operations are carried out in with the minimum adverse effect on the environment but implementing many available resources and approved processes •We protect the environment by striving to prevent and minimise our contribution to pollution of land, air, and water •We keep wastage to a minimum and maximise the efficient use of materials and resources, and manage disposal of all waste in a responsible manner •We use energy, water, and natural resources wisely and prevent pollution by minimising waste, recycling whenever possible and properly disposing of waste that cannot be recycled. •Our management processes are developed to ensure that environmental factors are considered during planning and implementation •We raise employee awareness and encourage best practices for sustainability at work

  Equal opportunity

  We want everyone to feel at home at Access, knowing that they are valued for what they do, not who they are. We want people to feel that they truly belong here regardless of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or anything else that makes them individual; after all, if we were all the same it would be a pretty dull place. We love the fact that we’re all different. Having more diverse perspectives at work improves how we run our business, helps us support our customers, and when you think about it, it's just more fun. For us, this all starts with helping everyone feel part of the family and being at their best every day, making Access a place where everyone can love what they do and do what they love. We all have regular check-ins with our leaders, take part in monthly employee surveys, have lots of chances to share our views and ask for help, and with our own learning system, 'Access Shine', we really can make things even better each and every day. At Access we'll always hire the best candidate but we're continually looking for creative ways to increase the mix of diverse candidates into our recruitment process. On the basis that you ‘have to see it, to be it’, one thing we're doing is sharing more stories to celebrate the wonderful diverse range of talent we have at Access. It is important for us that our employees understand and reflect the customers and communities we support, and we want everyone to feel at home here, knowing that they are valued for what they do, not who they are. We want people to feel that they truly belong here regardless of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or anything else that makes them individual.

  Wellbeing

  Access places specific emphasis on the health and wellbeing of its staff and provides a “Well-being” hub in workspace that provides support for Mental Health, Finances, Social, Physical, Emotional and purpose. Assistance from Health Assured is available for all staff and there are training resources for “working in the new normal” and “Mental health and wellbeing” . Access also has “well-being” champions throughout the organisation. This is supported by monthly employee “check in” surveys and offers of flexible working for staff to meet caring commitments.

Pricing

• Price: £1.50 a user a month
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at tendernotifications@theaccessgroup.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.