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Microsoft Office System
Customer Solution Case Study
Workflows Power New Courses at Vocational
Education Institute
Overview “Staff use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to
Country or Region: Victoria, Australia
Industry: Education
view the current status of every application. They
always know who to contact to get the accreditation
Customer Profile
The Box Hill Institute is one of Australia‟s
process moving.”
leading further education institutions, and Simeon Amor, IT Project Manager, Box Hill Institute
a part of the national network of vocation-
focused technical and further education Box Hill Institute is one of Victoria‟s leading vocational education
(TAFE) colleges.
providers. Located in Melbourne, its four separate campuses teach
Business Situation approximately 35,000 students each year. The process for
The process for gaining accredita tion for
new courses wa s complex and protracted, accrediting new courses with the Victorian Registration and
involving numerous written sign offs from Qualifications Authority was highly complex and subject to stringent
teaching centres across Box Hill Institute‟s
different campuse s. regulation. To complete this process, the institute used hand-
written forms that were forwarded through numerous departments
Solutio n
The institute automa ted the accredita tion via internal mail. However, this was slow, difficult to track and
process, using Microsoft ® Office created uncertainty around whether new courses would be
SharePoint® 2007. Forms were redesigned
in electronic format using Infopath and approved on time. In 2009, the institute deployed Microsoft® Office
routed through the organisation using K2 SharePoint® Server 2007, with electronic forms designed in
blackpearl workflows.
InfoPath ® Form Services directed automatically to staff according to
Benefits predetermined workflows. Since the status of each file is instantly
Faster course accreditation
Greater confidence tha t courses will be
visible, managers are in better control of course accreditation, and
ready for teaching on time have greater confidence that courses will be promptly approved
Ability to accommodate multiple
processes and available for students on time.
Assurance tha t regulatory standards are
being followed
“Staff can easily adapt
“The processes were Situation internally by Box Hill Institute staff, who then
Part of the Australian technical and further seek approval with an Education Quality
complex, butworkflows,
and change the education (TAFE) network, Box Hill Institute is Manager before gaining accreditation.
challenge was to ensure
so they can take a leading provider of vocational education in In other instances a course tha t has already
Victoria. The institute has four camp uses been accredited and whose teaching material
advantage of new
that courses were close to Melbourne‟s central business district is maintained on the National Training
accredited on to
opportunities time.” and provides around 400 full- and part-time Information System (NTI S) may be updated,
courses to 35,000 students each year. in which case teaching and administrative
streamline their
Simeon Amor, IT Project Manager, Box Hill staff need to be updated and only part of the
business processes.”
Institute. Each course taught a t Box Hill Institute has to usual accreditation process completed.
be audited internally for quality, and then
Brendan Barry, Technical Consultant, accredited by the Victorian Registration and “The processes were complex, but the
Dimension Data Qualifications Authority, which regulates all challenge was to ensure tha t courses were
education and training providers in the state. accredited on time,” says Amor. “A training
This is a complex process involving many centre might assume tha t it was all set up to
stakeholders across the institute. However, deliver a course, and even market it, but with
until the accreditation process is fully very little visibility on the process, the danger
completed, a course cannot be taught a t Box was tha t students would sign up to course,
Hill Institute. and only then discover that the teaching
centre did not have clearance to teach it.”
This accreditation process wa s frustrating for
the institute‟s 15 teaching centres, which Solution
were responsible for coordinating the In 2008, Box Hill Institute began to examine
accreditation, marketing and provisioning of its course accreditation processes and core
new courses. The process required files accreditation requirements. The objective
containing hand written forms to transit via was to eliminate bottlenecks and increase
internal mail between numerous transparency.
stakeholders in different departments.
“It took us a long time to build our business
“There were legibility issues,” says Simeon requirements,” says Amor. “We realised that
Amor, IT Project Manager, Box Hill Institute. whatever the te chnology we decided to use,
“And if there were any errors in a particular we would still need to re-engineer the way we
form, then it would have to be returned to be did things.”
reprocessed because accreditation has to
conform to strict Australian Qualification Having designed a set o f workflows, the
Framework standards.” institute invited a technology company to
build a proof of concept. “The first technology
Because accreditation files spent so much solution we tried had the side-effect of
time in internal mail, their progress was making a lot of the processes over-
extremely difficult to track and manage. complicated, because of the way the
Besides delays caused by errors or illegibility, technology worked,” says Amor.
a file might be misdirected, or sent to a staff “Simplicity was very important to us. The
member who was on holiday or extended teaching centre managers needed to be able
leave. to get information as quickly as possible.
The more complex it was, the less eager they
In addition, the process for accrediting would be to use the system, and we wouldn‟t
courses varies. Some courses are proposed accrue the benefits of having a system. ”
“Having validation fields In December 2008, staff at Microsoft partner Benefits
Dimension Data showed Box Hill Institute By using electronic forms and email
mean that most form- managers how workflows in the document workflows to help automate the accreditation
filling errors are management system, Microsoft® Office process, Box Hill Institute has reduced the
SharePoint® Server 2007, could be used to administrative workload, given teaching
avoided. So less time is control, direct and keep track of files during centre staff greater control over the
wasted sending the file the accreditation process. accreditation process, and reduced the time
taken to register new courses.
backwards and forwards The managers decided tha t Office SharePoint
through the internal Server 2007 me t the institute‟s objectives Accelerated accreditation
and engaged Dimension Data to deploy it. Using electronic forms with data validation
mail.” fields is expected to reduce accreditation
Simeon Amor, IT Project Manager, Box Hill “It was quite tricky,” says Brendan Barry, workload by 20 percent.
Institute. Technical Consulta nt, Dimension Data.
“There were a large number of faculties and “Paperwork is legible to begin with, so there
departments that needed to be conne cted to is little need for rework,” says Amor. “Having
the workflows.” validation fields mean that most form-filling
errors are avoided. So less time is wasted
Dimension Data transposed all the course sending the file backwards and forwards
accreditation forms into electronic format through the internal mail. This system should
using Microsoft Infopath® Form Services, so save two to three hours per week for
that they could be emailed between faculties administration staff.”
and modified at every stage. The forms were
designed with spe cial data validation fields Office SharePoint Server 2007 also improves
which meant that the form could not be file processing because the training centre
forwarded unless the requisite information at managers who sponsor new courses can
every stage was typed in correctly. determine the progress of each file in the
accreditation process. This means they are
The technology partner also helped define much more in control.
Box Hill Institute‟s requirements into a series
of processes. These described the steps tha t “Sta ff use the K2 blackpearl ViewFlow within
needed to be completed for successful SharePoint to view the current sta tus of every
accreditation, and were used to develop application,” says Barry. “The system tells
workflows that automa tically route the them whose „inbox‟ the file is sitting in, and
Infopath forms from one input source or they can see if no action has been taken for
stakeholder to the next. several days. As a result, they always know
who to conta ct to get the accreditation
In addition, Dimension Data introduced the process moving.
institute to independent software vendor K2,
whose blackpearl platform helps non- “Furthermore, the K2 blackpearl platform
technically skilled staff to design their own means that teaching centre sta ff can adap t
workflows without professional assistance. and change workflows by themselves.
This means they can take advantage of ne w
The new application was rolled out to 50 opportunities to streamline business
users across all teaching centres at the processes.”
beginning of March 2009.
For More Information Increas ed confidenc e cut the overall recruitment process time by at
For more information about Microsoft Because the accreditation process is faster least 50 percent.
products and services in Australia, and more predictable, training centre staff
call 13 20 58. have greater assurance tha t courses will be “There are two main benefits to doing
ready on time. This removes potential recruitment via SharePoint. First, just as with
For more information about Dimension sources of conflict between the marketing accreditation, training centre mana gement
Data products and services, call and admissions departments. have greater visibility, so they are in control
1800 638 457 or visit the Web site at: and can be confident that sign-o ffs ca n
www.dimensiondata.com/au “It‟s all about making sure that the right happen on time.
people know when the course is ready,” says
For more information about Box Hill Amor. “We have largely removed the danger “Secondly, the institute as a whole has
Institute products and services, call that a student will turn up to take a course greater assurance tha t no matter how
+61 3 9286 9222 or visit the Web site a t: that has been advertised, only to discover familiar its staff are with recruitment
http://www.bhta fe.edu.au that it is not yet available. guidelines, the correct procedures will be
followed, and Box Hill Institute will not be at
“In addition, staff can be confident that the risk of failing to comply with sta te
course is up to scratch. The accreditation regulations.”
process, as defined in the SharePoint
workflows and Infopath, conforms exactly to Microsoft Office System
the Australian Quality Training Framework. The Microsoft Office system is the business
And SharePoint leaves a complete audit trail world‟s chosen environment for information
so we can prove that regulations have been work, providing the programs, servers, and
observed.” services that help you succeed by
transforming informa tion into impact.
New recruit
Office SharePoint Server 2007‟s ability to For more information about the Microsoft
manage complex processes has encoura ged Office system, go to:
Box Hill Institute to use it to mana ge the http://www.microsoft. com/office
recruitment of new staff.
“Recruitment is subject to strict internal
governance rules,” says Amor. “These are
very stringent in Victoria, and we have to
meet certain criteria. Because these criteria
are configured into Infopath forms and the
sign-offs that each form needs, then we
ensure that we mee t them. ”
Office SharePoint 2007 workflows assist with
gaining clearance to hire new staff, arranging
contracts and establishing ne w systems
accounts for staff. Amor expects it will help
Software and Services Partner
Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 Dimension Data
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
This case study is fo r informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WAR RANTIES, EXPRES S OR IMP LIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published August 2009
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