Advance Learning Partnership (ALP) is a multi-academy trust comprising 23 primary and secondary schools across County Durham and Darlington. ALP has used IMP Planner since 2023, as detailed in this earlier case study, and in 2025 became an “early adopter” of IMP Purchasing.
Casting her mind back to Customer Connect 2024 in Leeds, Head of Finance Caroline Munroe recalled a “chance conversation” with IMP Co-Founder Dave Hall, who she was sitting next to during the morning of the event, which sparked “quite the journey” on Purchasing.
“I was talking to Dave and said we needed a finance system, including purchasing, from IMP and we needed it all to be together,” she revealed. “He listened, asked me a few questions, and didn’t say any more at that point. Then Dave and Will Jordan were on stage later that day announcing that is exactly what they were going to do!
“With IMP Planner, we quite quickly began utilising the budget pots, and the individual lines were great, so we could see how that budget had built up. However, this did not translate into our existing finance system. So, for example, we discovered that one academy had a £20,000 budget allocation for a swimming pool, but this just sat under ‘Buildings, Repairs and Maintenance’, which the estates team was not aware of.
“The more we utilised IMP, the more we realised we needed that next step which other purchasing systems could not provide. Planner showed us where we wanted to be with finance, but we didn’t have the beginning steps to be able to get there.”
Having made the decision to switch to Purchasing in September 2024, and communicated that move internally, Caroline outlined the “relentless development that followed from the IMP team, working in close collaboration with ourselves”.
“IMP were absolutely brilliant during development and implementation – really engaged, supportive, and literally hand-held me in those early stages,” she said. “The message was that whatever we do, we can change it as needed, and it will go into the system. Nothing was ever a problem. In terms of the adaptability, this is something we have always loved about IMP, and they know that customer voice is so important. We had lots of queries to make the system work for us at ALP, including around approval per budget line which was needed given we have so many different approvers, but the development team have worked with us to deliver updates. Communications, and knowing that we have been listened to, has been fantastic.”
In September 2025, ALP rolled out Purchasing to its central team – the first step of a three-week plan to transition all academies and its subsidiary company, ALP Active, which enables academies’ local communities to access their facilities during evenings, weekends and school holidays, fully onto the new IMP purchasing system.
“Central team colleagues, including our finance team, are finding it really easy to use and overall, it’s just user friendly,” Caroline explained. “We didn’t need to sit everybody down in a room and talk them through exactly what we needed to do, as it’s so obvious, but naturally we have unpicked queries as we have gone along. This has allowed different people within the team to talk through it, and we have involved the IMP support team in that process as needed. We have then rolled the system out to our primaries, training headteachers and office managers on how to log in, raise POs and manage approvals, and similarly with secondaries, where there are budget holders for every subject, pastoral support, site teams and so on, we run team sessions or whole-school training. At the same time, we are rolling out an online ticketing system, which gives us time to look into queries.”
Caroline identified several key benefits she expects will come through Purchasing. “Automation, live up-to-date information through Power BI, and the accuracy that is going to bring will be huge,” she said. “Because of the way the system is built budget holders can go in and clearly see where budget pots are, and the codes enable them to attribute spend to the right cost centres rather than having things hidden in the wrong places, which is where we were with our previous system. We have done lots of work to condense, combine and merge codes to make it as easy as possible for staff. Another benefit is the system will reduce budget holders overspending, particularly helping with factoring in areas such as software and licence renewals, which are prime examples of things that may not have been thought about but when they do come through in the summer term budgets may already have been spent. Purchasing’s punchout with Amazon, and other major suppliers, is also going to be significant.”
She added: “We are proud to be early adopters of Purchasing and are already seeing real benefits over and above what we had with IMP Planner alone. A huge thanks to everyone involved – both at IMP Software and ALP – for getting us to this point. The collective hard work and dedication has been invaluable. Now we have got one purchasing system that is all-through, we are looking forward to the efficiencies and improvements this change will bring and are also moving to IMP Finance in September 2026.”
