About
Dundee University Students’ Association (DUSA) is a vibrant, student-led organisation at the heart of campus life, supporting more than 15,000 students across representation, activities, advice, and events.
With such a diverse and active community, reliable, up-to-date student data is essential to drive engagement and demonstrate impact. For many years, however, DUSA depended heavily on the university for access to this information, leaving analytics and reporting slow, fragmented, and difficult to act on.
Without direct access to centralised, accurate student data, even routine engagement activity became more complex than it needed to be. Communications were harder to target, insight was delayed, and opportunities to understand and improve the student experience were often missed.
To move forward, DUSA needed ownership of its data, a single source of truth that could support confident decision-making and provide a strong foundation for engagement across the organisation.
The Problem
Without a centralised system, even the simplest data-driven tasks became slow, manual, and frustratingly difficult for DUSA’s teams. Every request for information involved waiting on university-supplied data, creating bottlenecks that affected day-to-day operations as well as longer-term planning.
Kellie Ioannou, Representation and Business Support Manager, gives communication as an example “If we wanted to email students, we needed that data to come from the university… we were getting a data sharing agreement in place, but again, it was very, very slow.”
This dependency affected far more than communications. Reporting became fragmented, understanding engagement trends was difficult, and teams lacked timely insight into how students were interacting with services and activities.
Critical operational tasks, such as verifying complaints or tracking participation, were often handled through manual spreadsheets. Without ownership of accurate, up-to-date data, DUSA found it difficult to respond quickly, evidence impact, or make informed decisions across the organisation.
The Solution
MSL’s Membership Management System (Core) along with StudentLink+ app, Attendance, Student Case Manager, Door Entry, and Volunteering modules gave DUSA what they’d been missing for years: a single, reliable source of truth for student data. This central hub synced directly with university records, delivered seamless single sign-on, and pulled previously disconnected information into one place so DUSA staff finally have confidence, ownership and immediacy they needed.
With this foundation in place, DUSA could build out the rest of their digital ecosystem in a way that strengthened, rather than fragmented, their data.
- Events and Ticketing (Core) became more than a way to sell tickets; it fed back rich attendance data to help identify who was engaging, when, and how often.
- Societies management (Core) became a live view of student involvement, giving clear, up-to-date insight into student group membership and activity.
- The Attendance module and participation tracking (including creative repurposing for initiatives like Breakfast Club) became a source of real-time engagement data that previously required manual work.
- The Volunteering module added another dimension of activity data, helping DUSA show the broader impact students were making.
Instead of operating as separate tools, each integrated module extended the same data backbone, giving DUSA a full, joined-up picture of student engagement for the first time.
The Result
With student data now centralised, DUSA has moved from fragmented insight to a complete, real-time view of engagement across their entire community.
Before they were dependent on slow university data feeds and manual spreadsheets. Now DUSA have immediate access to accurate student data when needed and are able to personalise communications, track trends, and repost effectively.
Kellie noted, “It’s about having the ability to be able to tackle anything that’s coming at us from a student's perspective and be like, okay, we know the answer to that.”
The holistic integration of modules has improved efficiency, enhanced student experiences, and created a foundation for strategic planning through annual surveys and targeted engagement initiatives.
MSL has enabled DUSA to confidently use data to inform decisions while maintaining full control as the data controller, streamlining reporting, and supporting evidence-based interventions across the student body.