Thesis SM 2025 Product Releases: More Control, Less Admin, Better Student Experiences

The start of a new year is a great moment to pause and reflect.

If you work in Higher Education, you don’t need reminding that the pace never really slows down. There’s always something changing, statutory requirements, internal processes, student expectations, along with the day-to-day pressure of keeping everything running smoothly, even when workloads are at their highest.

That’s exactly why Thesis SM is built as a living system. It’s not something we ever “finish”, it’s something that continues to evolve, in step with the institutions using it across the UK, Ireland, and Canada. We stay close to our customers throughout the year, listening carefully, tracking what’s changing around them, and aiming to stay proactive rather than reactive wherever we can. Many of these improvements came directly from customer feedback and design sessions throughout the year.

Looking back on 2025, our focus was simple:

Make day-to-day work easier for staff, and make the student experience clearer, faster, and more intuitive.

Here’s a high-level view of what we delivered across the year, and what it means in real terms.

More control, without added complexity

A consistent theme throughout 2025 was giving institutions greater control without adding complexity.

Our product philosophy is “configuration not customisation”, so every institution benefits from improvements without creating one-off customisations.

That meant expanding configuration in ways that support different policies, different student groups, and different operational models, while keeping the product consistent and supported.

Some examples include:

• More configurable address templates, to better reflect regional and international formats

• Better control over student self-service portal screens, so institutions can choose what’s enabled and what’s not

• Improvements to locked account handling, allowing institutions to follow their own policies

• More flexible matched record criteria, helping teams manage duplicate records confidently across multiple data sources

Less admin pressure for teams

Many of the improvements delivered in 2025 were driven by a very real goal we hear often: Reduce manual effort, reduce follow-up work, and reduce pressure on staff time.

A few standout areas:

• Priority registration became more adaptable, allowing institutions to define priority groups so students who rely on specific courses can register at the right time without compromising fairness when registration opens more widely.

• Letter generation continued to evolve, including student-actioned requests. In practice, that means fewer routine tasks for staff teams, faster turnaround for students, and less risk of errors caused by manual processing.

• We also introduced advanced notes with security controls, so sensitive information can be restricted to the right staff roles. This strengthens governance while supporting safe use of a feature that teams rely on daily.

A smoother admissions experience (for applicants and staff)

Admissions workflows were another major focus area this year, because when applications are flowing in, the experience needs to be smooth for everyone involved.

Enhancements to Apply Now, including auto-population and auto-completion, were designed to reduce friction for applicants and improve completion and data quality.

At the same time, we introduced more flexibility for institutions to shape how the admissions journey is presented and managed:

• Better configuration for Apply Now forms (labels, fields, help text, supporting content)

• Enhanced applicant checklists, improving document collection and communication

• More flexibility in admissions status and stage displays, reducing the time staff spend explaining progress and improving clarity for applicants

The overall goal here is simple: fewer misunderstandings, fewer follow-ups, and a clearer experience from the start.

Stronger foundations where accuracy matters most

Some parts of an SIS need to be flexible, but others need to be precise, consistent, and policy-driven.

In 2025, we expanded grade conditions to support multi-layer configuration, allowing institutions to embed assessment and repeat-attempt rules across multiple levels of granularity. This helps ensure policies are applied consistently and reduces the need for manual second-stage checking.

We also strengthened academic record management, ensuring institutions retain a complete and accurate view of a student’s journey, through enhancements to:

• Course prerequisites and equivalence

• Transfer credits, including non-course transfer credits

• Query lists, supporting broader and more flexible use across institutions

On the finance side, we introduced support for multiple active payment providers and enhanced fee and deposit steps. These changes help institutions align payment processes with their policies, particularly where different conditions apply to different student groups.

More transparency and confidence around data

Data privacy and trust remain central, not just because of compliance, but because students increasingly expect clarity and control.

Student data privacy profiles continued to evolve in 2025, giving applicants and students a clear view of what data is held about them, who can access it, and the ability to grant or revoke third-party access at any time, with staff seeing the same view for alignment.

Alongside functional improvements, Thesis SM continued to support a full range of UK statutory returns through structured analysis, development, and testing, with further improvements for Canadian institutions through T2202 enhancements.

Looking ahead

Across 2025, one thing remained constant: our commitment to listening closely, configuring thoughtfully, and delivering improvements rooted in real higher education experience.

Higher education doesn’t stand still, and neither can the systems that support it. In 2026, we’ll keep working alongside our customers to stay proactive, deliver meaningful improvements, and make Thesis SM even easier to run, easier to adapt, and easier to trust.

About the author: Cerys Owen - Director of Product

As Director of Product Management at Thesis SM, I work closely with institutions, customers, and internal teams to shape both the long-term direction of our product and its day-to-day evolution. Leading a team of Product experts, my focus is on listening closely to real operational challenges and translating them into a configurable, trustworthy system that can adapt to change, reduce pressure for staff, and create clearer, more intuitive experiences for students. At the heart of this work is a strong commitment to delivering real, lasting value for institutions, grounded in the needs of their staff and students.