Find the Secure AI revenue in education.
A full-day working session for Ingram Micro Microsoft partners. How schools, trusts and colleges are funded, where AI could help, who signs the order, and how to reach them. Included with Cumulus Practice and Executive. £500 per MSP for Community members, up to 2 seats.
Microsoft co-op funding. Subject to eligibility, you may be able to claim back up to 100% of the £500. We give you the invoice and the proof-of-execution paperwork the claim needs. Check with Ingram that you qualify before you rely on it.
You sell the same technology to every industry. You cannot sell the same business case to every industry.
The same Microsoft work sells differently to a college than to a manufacturer, because their money is made and lost in different places.
Full-time teachers in England worked an average of 52.4 hours in a reference week, and school leaders 58.2 hours, in the 2024 Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders survey for the Department for Education. Around eight of those hours go on marking and six on planning. Workload is the reason most often given for leaving. Budgets are tightening at the same time, so every school, trust and college is trying to do the same work with less.
Commercial consulting goes deep into one sector. Technology implementation works largely the same way across all of them. Both matter, and they are bought by different people.
They need measurable business outcomes.
They need IT policies and change management.
Secure AI adds a business conversation above the technical one. Neither is better. An MSP needs both, and needs to know which one it is in.
Answers: I already know Microsoft, so why do I need an education workshop? You already sell across the horizontal. This workshop builds the vertical.
This is how Cumulus reads the sector. It comes from our own model and from interviews with people who run these firms. Treat it as a pattern to test on your own customers, not a fact.
Being brought in after the business decision has already been made.
That decision gets made in a conversation about the customer’s business, not their IT. This workshop is about how to get into that conversation.
We only hear about it when they ask us to quote.
We built exactly what they asked for, but there was no next conversation.
Whoever leads the commercial conversation writes the requirement everybody else quotes against. A requirement written without you leaves you competing inside somebody else’s decision, often on scope and price rather than business value.
Three numbers an education board watches.
These work for a state school, a multi-academy trust, a further education college and a university. Most technical sales conversations do not begin with them.
Their own trend
Total staff cost as a share of income. The number a governing body watches most closely. Ask for their own figure, and whether it has risen.
Staff and learners
Two numbers, and they are connected. A teacher who leaves takes experience and costs money to replace. A learner who leaves takes the funding.
Enquiry to enrolment
Where the institution recruits, income follows the learner. This is the only number that adds income rather than saving cost. In a state school the equivalent is places filled and pupils retained.
Five kinds of organisation. One method.
All five are funded per learner and staffed by people who are hard to replace, so one model covers them all. What changes is where the value leaks.
Which one you are in front of changes the examples, not the method.
Answers: will this cover the schools and colleges I actually sell to? The worked example is a further education college group, because it has both admissions pressure and teaching workload in one place.
The 4-Step Vertical Business Outcomes System, applied to education.
One method, applied to a different sector each month.
Know the sector
How schools, trusts and colleges are funded, the numbers their governing body watches, and where staff hours and income get lost.
Open the door
The customers you already have, the firms worth targeting, and how to get a meeting with the person who signs. This is not a cold-calling list.
Find the AI opportunity
Where AI could make them more money, free up time, or cut risk. Then how a customer moves through the four steps, starting with a free assessment.
Build the case
How the work should run afterwards, what it is worth, and how to prove it if they ask.
Know the sector → open the door → find the AI opportunity → build the case
Answers: what will the day teach me to do? Sector knowledge, then trusted access, then a customer opportunity, then a commercial case.
Where the opportunity sits in an education organisation.
Five places to look. They are not equal, and the biggest one is usually not where you start.
The one worth most is often the one they cannot build yet. Telling them apart is the job.
Answers: where would I actually start? Finding and ranking these for one customer is what the Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop does. Sizing the chosen one in the customer’s own numbers is what the Secure AI Business Case & Process Design does.
Who you need in the room at the customer.
Titles vary between schools, trusts, colleges and universities. Ask for the role, not the title:
Owns the plan
And the relationship with the governing body. Ask what two points of conversion are worth, and let them do the sum.
Owns working capital
Understands the figures faster than anyone else in the room, and will check yours.
Owns capacity, downtime and quality
Knows exactly where the hours go. Nobody ever asks them about it in money.
Owns what any system may see
This is data about children. Their answer sits above efficiency and is not negotiable. Ask for them by name in the first meeting.
How MSPs usually get ready for a sector.
All three are sensible. Here is where each one stops being enough.
You get the size of the market and the growth rate.
Your engineers learn the product properly, and usually for free.
You get a list of things AI can do, with examples.
The workshop gives you the part none of them cover. How an education organisation is funded, where AI could help, who signs the order, and 200 organisations to call.
Four things schools and colleges say.
If you have sold into education you have heard at least two of them. Each one is money or a person leaving, and none of them sounds like an AI problem.
Staff are planning and marking at eleven at night, then teaching at eight.
We lost two good teachers this year and both said workload.
An enquiry came in on Friday and nobody replied until Wednesday.
Every inspection requirement lands on the same few senior people.
Their words beat your list every time. The workshop covers what each one costs, and which of them AI can do something about.
What you leave with on the day.
The five sub-sectors, the three board numbers, and the eight processes that carry the value.
One opportunity packaged into something your team can price.
Four roles, what each one owns, and the number each is measured on.
Up to 200 named UK schools, trusts and colleges, picked to match the kind of organisation the workshop covers. Enough to start booking meetings.
What to say first, and what to ask before you propose anything.
How to move a customer from a first conversation to an implementation, without asking them to commit early.
Three priced steps, then the build.
The customer only buys the next step if the last one was worth it.
- 1 Secure AI Opportunity Assessment Free. Find where Secure AI could create value.
- 2 Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop £2,500. One day with the leadership team. Get the leadership team agreed on what matters most, which opportunity comes first, and whether to go ahead at all.
- 3 Secure AI Business Case & Process Design From £15,000. About 30 days. Size the chosen opportunity in the customer’s own numbers. Redesign the process, and create the business case and high-level solution design needed before build.
- 4 Secure AI Implementation Partner price. You complete the detailed technical design, build it, get people using it, and run it for a monthly fee.
One day does not make you an education consultant. It does let you open the right conversation and work out whether there is a deal in it. If a real opportunity needs deeper work, Cumulus does the commercial side. Your customer stays yours. Steps 1 to 3 are the Cumulus commercial layer, ending at the high-level solution design. Step 4 is the MSP technical layer: the detailed technical design, then build, deploy and integrate.
Practice and Executive members pay nothing, because this workshop is included. Community members pay £500 per MSP, plus VAT, and that covers two seats.
Eligible partners may be able to use Microsoft co-op funding. Check your eligibility and the claim route with Ingram Micro before you count on the money.
Book your MSP’s place.
Four short steps. Two seats are included, and you can add the second person later.
Ten sectors. One workshop a month. Education is the third.
Book Education for £500. Or join Cumulus Practice for £3,500 a year and get all ten workshops plus the complete 5P System. Ten workshops bought separately would cost £5,000.
Win the business case before you win the build.