Tim Davidson & Seong Hoon Jho

AUT

Wednesday 3 October 2018
4.00pm-4.30pm
Concurrent Session 1B

Presentation Title

IT Operations 101 – Driving Efficiencies – Eliminating Commodity

Abstract

Like many universities, AUT gets a considerable number of website based applications that are incomplete – normally due to the applicant abandoning the process half way through. Although there are many reasons as to why this happens, we wanted to see if there was something we could build that could help to minimise this problem.
 
We wanted to create an application process that was super simple to use, only asking the questions that were necessary to determine edibility, was engaging, innovative, and would create an instant sense of certainty around the likelihood of acceptance.
 
Using our NINA Bot platform, we’ve created a bot that allows prospective students to find a course (based on career or subject preference) apply for it, and in some cases even get an instant provisional offer of place.
 
Our bot is available through multiple channels - the most important being platforms such as Messenger which so many of our students use on a daily basis. It supports live handover functionality, which allows a student to chat to a ‘real’ person at AUT if required.
 
We’ve also used Robotic Process Automation to simplify the bots integration with our existing core university systems.
 
If accepted, we plan to do a couple of live demo’s in the presentation and talk about the technology stack it’s built on.
 
Here’s a short video that shows it in use: https://1drv.ms/v/s!AllplCDxu9JhkhEWoQCFYcRhLWre
 

Bio

Tim Davison began working in AUT’s Strategy & Planning team about six years ago. Tim is responsible for business intelligence at AUT and has won multiple accolades for his work in emerging technologies, including the 2014 and 2016 Teritary ICT Microsoft Innovation Supreme Awards.
 
Seong graduated with a Bachelor of Computer and Information Science degree from AUT and was employeed as a graduate by AUT straight after his studies. By the end of his graduate role, he was promoted to Business Intelligence Developer.