Annual Report 2008 - Central Queensland University

pages associated with prospective students. The project commenced a detailed
survey of key stakeholder groups using an experienced independent consultant,
commencing with internal and external stakeholders. A survey with student focus
groups is scheduled for early 2009.
Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)
The University acquired and implemented a CRM system and associated online
Knowledge Base in 2008, which is intended to produce a single, easy-to-use
interface for all student enquiries. Customer enquiry details are collected
systematically and available for more effective customer engagement. The online
Knowledge Base assists customer enquiries by providing 24/7 self-service to more
than 600 question and answer sets relating to CQUniversity offerings and processes.
The CRM system was successfully integrated with core information systems such
as PeopleSoft Student, providing real-time accurate data. Since going live in early
October 2008, the system has been used to successfully process 12,800 queries from
prospective and current students, and 51,000 queries for online information.
Business Intelligence Project
In 2008, the Business Intelligence Project undertook conversion of more than 350
reports for the new PeopleSoft Student System, moving to web-based delivery. The
project produced a number of information dashboards for executive and senior
academic staff, highlighting course and program student numbers, performance and
trends in key areas. A dashboard was produced for the new CRM system to highlight
key statistics of customer engagement and responsiveness to enquiries. The project
conducted stakeholder interviews to ascertain and prioritise future information
needs and this assisted in the expansion of the data warehouse. Software and
technology upgrades introduced in the fourth quarter of 2008 resulted in substantial
improvements in speed of processing and delivery.
Finance System Improvements
Improvements have also been made to the University’s core finance system. The
initiative has focussed on streamlining and implementing increased levels of system
automation across core administrative functions such as the general debtor collection
and bank reconciliation processes. Progress has also been made to improve a wide
range of operational and strategic reporting.
Despite hold-ups
due to wet weather,
the new $7.85
million Technology
& Information
Resource Centre
has been emerging
in the middle of our
Mackay Campus.
Learning Management System (LMS) Implementation
In 2008 the University made the commitment to pursue the adoption of a single
enterprise wide LMS. A comprehensive evaluation of open source software systems
was undertaken by academic staff from across the University involving product
trials and extensive collaboration with other universities to identify an appropriate
solution for CQUniversity. Based on the recommendations of that group a project
team is to be formed in 2009 and charged with facilitating the implementation of the
Moodle LMS.
Infrastructure
The University increased its systems capacity through the acquisition of low cost
commodity server hardware to accommodate future system expansion, allow for
additional systems and upgrade existing systems to faster, highly available platforms.
This hardware underpins most of CQUniversity’s major corporate systems and runs
databases, application servers, web servers and virtual machines. In provisioning
new hardware, ITD has greatly reduced support costs by the removal of older
systems from support contracts.
In addition to designing all new systems for business continuity through high
availability, ITD has reviewed in depth the design of existing systems and undertaken
work to increase their robustness and reduce the possibility of unplanned outages.
A major work effort was undertaken in 2008 to increase the reliability and efficiency
of the University’s backup solution.
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