QuantumIT / InPlace Software is delighted to announce an investment partnership with Quad Partners (Quad Partners LLC), a substantial New York based private equity fund manager with a focus on the education industry and education technology.
Guthrie White(CEO and Founder of QuantumIT):
Quad Partners’ market reach and expertise in the sector, particularly in the US and Canada, will be great for the InPlace business. I deduce by the depth of their exhausting due diligence process that Quad does not throw their money about lightly, so it is with some pride we accept their minority stake and partnership.
On the investment Guthrie noted:
This investment will enable us to deliver our technology roadmap more quickly and ramp up our sales and deployment teams to ensure the world gets its best opportunity to derive value from our software. We have an ambitious development plan addressing new and improved features in the InPlace and InPlace Network solutions. Supporting our growing customer base with a more scalable, fault tolerant application taking full advantage of cloud technology requires continual substantial investment in the software. Our customers will be the beneficiaries.
The InPlace software platform supports educational institutions organising student work experience assignments (such as placements, internships, apprenticeships, clinical, co-op experiences, etc.) enabling educators to integrate their academic curriculums with industry. Formal industry experience for students has long been a part of health and education disciplines and is a feature of growing importance in many disciplines at tertiary education bodies. Integrating work experience into academic programs through Work Integrated Learning models gives students exposure to real-world experience, enabling them to “road test” their skills and meet potential future employers in a genuine working environment. The QuantumIT business is dedicated to helping its customers manage that business capability efficiently, from both the educator and employer perspectives.
Daniel Neuwirth, General Partner and Cofounder of Quad, added, “The importance of work integrated learning is growing globally due to both university initiatives and increased regulatory requirements for licensed professionals. InPlace provides a comprehensive and flexible solution that can manage the growing complexities of the placement process. We are excited to partner with Guthrie and the QuantumIT team in providing this offering to more customers globally.”
On the back of some significant customer wins, this investment presents additional exciting opportunities for the business:
Victorian TAFE Sector
In March 2021 QuantumIT executed an agreement with the Victorian Department of Education to deploy InPlace to the 16 TAFEs in Victoria – 11 new customers and 5 upgrades to existing InPlace deployments. The TAFE network is the Victorian Government’s vocational education delivery structure, a fundamental cog in the economic development model for the state. The network supports many vocational employment programs such as Return to Work, Government funded Free TAFE and specific programs targeting industry sectors delivered through a policy structure supporting vocational education with a high focus on student employability and social needs.
InPlace will deliver independently managed deployments in each TAFE, enabling shared maintenance of workplace safety audits providing coherent and current statistical data to the Department of Education to support state-wide workforce and skills planning.
InPlace and InPlace Analytics support educators in capturing and analysing employer feedback on execution of skills by students in the workplace. The aggregate picture helps educators better target curriculum content to meet industry requirements, and student feedback supports educators in coaching employers to provide better student experiences.
With 8 of the 9 universities and the Government TAFE network all using InPlace In Victoria, we look forward with some anticipation to see what an impact smart software could have in our home state.
Queensland Education Department (QED)
Moving to more geographically distant successes, InPlace Network was awarded the contract by the Queensland Education Department to provide the software to manage incoming student-teacher assignments in the pre-school, primary, and secondary schools in the State of Queensland. The region has over 1800 schools hosting over 10,000 placements during a school year, with pre-service teachers coming from tertiary educators around Australia. The significant opportunities for process efficiencies and better use of data have driven the project which will provide benefits to the schools, tertiary education partners and the QED. This follows InPlace Network deployments to major hospital and aged care networks in Australia, UK and the US where over 1000 hospitals and health facilities use the platform to manage many thousands of student clinical placements.
Western Governors University
Further afield, the deployment of InPlace to the largest university in the US, the innovative Western Governors University is proceeding well through the Health Professions and Teaching schools. Our US team is working with WGU on a rapid rollout through the many online programs delivered by one of the fastest growing universities in the US. With over 300,000 placement agencies hosting students the demands on the system and staff of the university are significant. We hope to see InPlace as a core part of the supporting IT infrastructure at WGU for many years.
QuantumIT thanks Activ8 Capital Advisors and Thomson Geer Lawyers for supporting QuantumIT/InPlace in the fund-raising process.
