Sydney’s University of Technology deploys IBM’s Cognos

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 22 September 2009 20:07

IT Industry - Deals

Sydney’s University of Technology (UTS) has selected IBM’s Cognos 8.3 as its new student management reporting tool which the university says will deliver information faster to its 33,000 students and, at the same time, improve productivity.

According to UTS’ Student Systems Implementation Project Manager, Miranda Brookes, the university is transforming the way they it uses information, allowing it to gain “valuable insight” about what is happening across the organisation to help drive smarter decisions.

Brookes says UTS Student Administration is responsible for managing information for around 33,000 students via the Student Management portal, from student applications and enrolments through to curriculum documents, examination results and alumni data, and to support this flow of data, UTS Student Centre staff process an average of 15 student inquiries per minute.

According to IBM, the Student Management portal application (also known as Ci) introduces .NET technology and
workflow management allowing for better student self management and staff to student interactions, overall giving staff more time to focus on business improvement.

The new business intelligence tool leverages the Student Management source system for reporting, “in turn providing greater flexibility of report format and prompting, audit capability to better understand usage, as well as integration with the Student Management portal application.”

Brookes says that “making IBM Cognos the common reporting platform across the University offers savings in
licence costs, savings in software administration and maintenance, and capitalises on the existing IBM Cognos skills within the university,” and she adds, “it also offers the future potential for a consolidated portal for all strategic university information.”

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