Knovia

Overview

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Knovia Group brings together a collective of leading education and skills specialists, including Paragon Skills, Shaping Lives, Tempdent and the recently welcomed Babington. United by a shared purpose, the Knovia Group support thousands of learners through high-quality workshops, functional skills delivery and specialist apprenticeship programmes, reaching diverse cohorts through flexible and accessible learning models.

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With growing learner numbers and differing booking models across brands, Knovia needed a more robust, scalable way to manage workshop scheduling and attendance.

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The challenge

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Managing bookings across Knovia’s education brands had become increasingly complex (and time-consuming). Before Appointedd, teams relied on a mix of Microsoft Bookings, Excel spreadsheets, and Outlook calendars. This created daily friction for staff and confusion for learners.

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Key challenges included:

• Manual workarounds and “gremlins” causing errors in the booking system.
• Rogue or duplicate bookings appearing in tutor diaries disrupting schedules.
• Limited visibility of attendance and no reliable live reporting.
• Staff spending significant time every day manually checking, correcting, and tracking bookings.
• A heavy reliance on complex spreadsheets was required to coordinate cohorts and attendance.

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For some teams, simply keeping bookings accurate meant constant firefighting, and valuable time lost to admin rather than learner support.

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The solution

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Knovia implemented Appointedd as a centralised booking platform across multiple brands. Working closely with Appointedd’s Client Success Team, Knovia tailored the platform to support two distinct booking models:

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• Self-booking learners, where individuals manage their own sessions
• Cohort-based bookings, where learners are booking centrally but retain flexibility to reschedule or cancel themselves

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Knovia’s project and learning teams collaborated with Appointedd to unpick legacy setup issues, simplify communications, and align the platform with how their teams actually work.

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The results

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• Half a day a week saved in admin time for key staff members.
• Average attendance increased from 60% to 71%.
• Teams can now track live learner attendance in real time.
• Learners can cancel and reschedule their own bookings, reducing inbox traffic for tutors.
• Staff no longer need to manually fix diary errors or check bookings daily.
• Centralised data has replaced complex, multi-tab, colour-coded spreadsheets.
• Appointedd supports both structured cohort models and self-service learning journeys.
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Knovia worked closely with their Client Success Manager throughout the implementation, with hands-on training and ongoing support tailored to different teams.

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As the rollout progressed, lessons learned were applied to future implementations, helping newer brands adopt Appointedd faster and with fewer configuration issues.

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By moving to Appointedd, Knovia has replaced complexity with clarity. What was once a patchwork of spreadsheets, and manual workarounds is now a single, scalable booking experience. Administrative time has been reduced, attendance is improving, and teams finally have the visibility they need to make informed real-time decisions.

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Just as importantly, learners now have greater ownership over their schedules, while staff are freed up to focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality learning experiences.

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With Appointedd established as Knovia’s standard solution the business is well positioned to continue scaling with consistency, efficiency, and control.

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