Te Wananga o Aotearoa(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking: 25

Senior IS executive: Warren Williams, information technology manager
Reports to: Executive director, operational support
Size of IS shop: 34

PCs: 4439
Mobile PCs: 339
Terminals: 183
Hand-held devices: 324
Total screens: 5285

Industry: Educational services
PC environment: HP; IBM; Acer; Apple Mac; Windows XP, Vista
Server environment: HP, IBM, Microsoft
DBMS: SQL
Address: 1 Factory Rd, Te Awamutu
Website: www.twoa.ac.nz
Key IS projects this year: Capital replacement; switches across the country; HRIMS project; VOIP; student portal project.

Te Wananga o Aotearoa (TWOA) continues to improve and review current ICT systems and processes, with efficiency initiatives implementeded wherever appropriate, says information technology manager Warren Williams.

Cost recovery initiatives are a particular focus — with the IT team at TWOA looking at systems and applications that can better identify where costs can be recovered.

While overall IT budgets have decreased slightly, ICT project spending is up, along with increased IT staff levels. Investments in TWOA’s business intelligence systems continue from last year, and there are several new areas of ICT project development and investment. These include investment in CRM systems and processes, the development of a VoIP communications platform and the extension of wireless infrastructure across TWOA campuses.

TWOA is also focusing on knowledge management systems this year and will conduct web channel reviews with consideration of Web 2.0 technologies and features.

From a financial perspective, the most significant IT expense areas this year will be for VoIP investment, spending on a new HR management information system, along with capital replacement of infrastructure hardware across national sites.

“The financial climate is creating behavioural changes within the IT industry. Vendors and suppliers are becoming more aware of how important existing and potential clients are, and have become more proactive in building and maintaining these relationships. Clients are in turn becoming more cautious regarding expenditure and procurement practices are changing to reflect this behaviour,” says Williams.