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A disconnect between new and legacy systems and a lack of internal knowledge was proving a barrier to Victoria University's ability to transform and use modern cloud and SaaS platforms.
Delivering a seamless experience to staff and students was not easy when the university’s digital interfaces weren’t all on the same page.
However, thanks to a partnership with Auckland-based Adaptiv, Fusion5 and systems hosted in Microsoft Azure, the university is getting on top of those challenges.
Victoria Uni's legacy IT system was made up of single-purpose platforms that did not speak to each other, storing student data, academic records, timetables and more in separate siloes. There was no single view of that information.
The university had a backlog of projects it wasn’t able to deliver with its existing technology, threatening its ability to provide seamless services and experiences in a competitive tertiary education market.
With Microsoft partner Adaptiv, it embarked on a mission to find a trustworthy and affordable solution.
Adaptiv held a series of workshops to help the university's teams understand what integration was and how it worked on the Microsoft platform. It then used these workshops to draw insights on the university’s needs and develop an implementation roadmap.
“The workshops provide an opportunity to bring the key people together and really hone in on what we’re looking to achieve, and develop a comprehensive blueprint for success," said Nikolai Blackie, principal architect at Adaptiv.
The workshop took Victoria Uni through Microsoft’s roadmap and deep-dived into the technical aspects of the Azure solution, said Micky Heath, VUW project manager.
“It was a good balance of everything we needed to know," he said. "By the end of the day, we were confident that Azure was going to do the job we needed.”
Adaptiv then took VUW through a co-design process that established the university’s digital maturity, responsibility for project governance, integration strategy and how the solution would be designed.
Then came a proof of concept to validate VUW’s technology decision and project approach.
Adaptiv listened to the university's requirements, Heath said.
“They quickly got a range of components up and running, showing us that Azure Integration would successfully work for us, and perform to our expectations.”
The final phase of Adaptiv’s five-step roadmap was to work with VUW’s teams to create an integrated platform through Azure’s applied information sciences technology.
Adaptiv developed a staff directory app that could be accessed via the VUW website, pulling data from five separate sources into one centralised space under Azure.
The next step was making all that data easily accessible through a single CRM platform.
“It was especially important for the University to find local partners with proven experience in the New Zealand tertiary education sector, to ensure they had a real understanding of what was needed,” said Kristy Brown, country manager, Microsoft, at Fusion5.
Having honed its education prowess through work with tertiary educators up and down the country, the Fusion5 team worked alongside VUW to update its CRM strategy and create a five-year roadmap, identifying the major streams of work that would help the University achieve its goals.
“We really approached things with a strategic lens, identifying which things would be the most relevant and impactful to the University’s needs, then working to deliver quick success,” Brown said.
Fusion5 also recommended Microsoft’s Power Platform, which would enable the University’s IT teams to make their own innovations without having to rely on third parties.
Dynamics 365 was introduced to allow students to browse courses, enrol online and connect to internal systems. Adaptiv then helped automate the university's ERP finance functions to reduce manual administration and data entry errors and free staff to address more strategic tasks.
As for students, research revealed they wanted answers to common questions, and a searchable list of services such as accommodation, or access to payment tools in one central place.
Once existing data and student feedback were brought together, everything was integrated into a central Azure SQL database in the Dynamics 365 platform. Fusion5 created a customised Power Apps Portal to enable staff and students to access and use it in the ways they’d asked for, overseen by Microsoft’s own FastTrack team.
“I think that’s a really good lesson to others who are looking to go on this journey, that you should never just assume you know what your staff and students want. This showed me what a close relationship with its students means for a University,” Brown said.
VUW's online platform now provides a single view of students and staff and faster and easier connections with co-workers to save time and money.
Digitising processes has also increased local and overseas enrolments, making it easier for students to engage with the university. Fewer students are withdrawing from courses, a mark of success for any educational institution.
It also paved the way for the replacement of legacy HR systems with modern platforms integrated with the rest of the organisation – which wasn’t possible before the adoption of Azure.
“Not only has the adoption of Azure enabled us to digitise manual processes, realise efficiencies and cost benefits, and bring on board a raft of new and improved applications with little to no fuss, it’s really given us an edge over those other universities still hamstrung by aging tech,” Heath said..
But the most important sign of success was the user experience, which staff said had improved ten-fold.
“I get comments everyday about how our integration to the cloud and centralised app have completely transformed the mindset of our staff about using technology, which is testament to the success of this project,” said Heath.
The VUW team is now developing new applications independently within the system that Adaptiv helped build, allowing it to optimise resources and reduce costs.
“The beauty of this solution is it’s repeatable and can be utilised by others in the education sector. It demonstrates integrated systems can be affordable and approachable, and that they provide a backbone for digital transformation across your entire organisation,” said Phil Cullen, general manager of Adaptiv.
The VUW project has sparked enquiries from a number of other educational institutes such as University of Waikato and University of Canterbury.
Matt Bostwick, partner director at Microsoft NZ, said he was thrilled Adaptiv’s integration project had attracted other educational institutes to follow suit.
