James Cook University addresses costly tech-debt with SaaS overhaul

A leading institution renowned for its research and teaching excellence, James Cook University (JCU), has transitioned its legacy on-premise system to TechnologyOne’s innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. Addressing operational challenges caused by technical debt and providing the foundations for a first-class user experience for its 19,000 students and 2,000 staff.

Having gone live with TechnologyOne’s SaaS platform for Financials and Student Management software, the university will now implement an ambitious roadmap of additional features in the coming months to further enhance the entire student journey from enrolment to graduation. In addition, the move sees TechnologyOne taking primary responsibility for the SaaS platform’s security, maintenance and upgrades, releasing capacity within the IT team to focus on other tasks.

JCU Associate Director of Digital Applications and Software Engineering Felipe Duncan said: “Our legacy system had been accumulated over many years resulting in a poor user experience for students and faculty. The platform struggled to handle the load during busy periods like admissions and enrolments, impacting students trying to register for programs and classes. Moving to SaaS has been the catalyst for us to address our technical debt and remediate these issues but more importantly it provides the foundation we need to give our staff and students so many new capabilities.”

“TechnologyOne will significantly reduce the burden on our IT department. A combination of maintenance-free infrastructure and significantly fewer tickets raised will allow us to redirect their time from troubleshooting to driving tangible value for our staff and students.”

The move to SaaS will also help JCU reduce its total cost of ownership, with a single solution built on a single code line its finance, budgeting and student management, eliminating the need for multiple vendors, multiple points of failure and complex ecosystems driving up costs.

Peter Nikoletatos, TechnologyOne Industry Director for Higher Education, said: “We’ve been a partner of James Cook University for 30 years so it’s hugely rewarding to support them in this milestone event. Their innovative vision goes way beyond fixing an out-of-date system; instead they choose new technologies that enable them to invest in the future. The successful transition is a result of a truly collaborative partnership that not only gives students a superior experience today, but for years to come.”

“Managing extensive IT infrastructure and servers is not a primary focus of universities, it's costly and carries significant risks. TechnologyOne takes full responsibility for the complete outcome of the solution experience – not just the software, enabling JCU to leverage the expertise of our highly skilled in-house consulting team, so they can focus on delivering enriching educational experiences for students.”