Appian assists paper removal at Uni of SA

The Appian Cloud has been successfully deployed at the University of South Australia as part of the university's strategic objective to remove all paper from its administrative systems by 2018.

Appian's platform has enabled the university to implement a series of apps across its recruiting, contracting, human resources and procurement process, which has subsequently eliminated the need for paper forms.

"We want all of our IT systems and business processes to be faster, simpler and more engaging for all of our end users, be they professional staff, academics or students," said Tony Dalwood, Deputy Director of Information Strategy, University of South Australia.

"Appian's cloud platform is allowing us to drive that comprehensive transformation."

All of the university's deployed and planned applications leverage Appian's SAIL architecture and interface flexibility to provide a custom-branded, consistent and fit-for-purpose user experience across web and mobile devices through a single development effort.

The university's first Appian deployment was for a variety of processes related to their casual academic employees. The application shifted recruitment, contracting and ongoing processes such as time-sheet submission and approval for these seasonal and part-time academics from paper onto online and mobile environments. The university engages roughly 4000 of these casual staff every year. In the past, this created more than 600 paper documents every month, all of which were then re-keyed into various IT systems.

Appian's low-code development approach then allowed aspects of the casual academic processes to be extended to all staff for things such as variations to employment conditions and allowance requests.

The university will soon release a redesigned travel request and approval process on Appian, making it more efficient for senior-level academics travelling for research or other university-related obligations, as well as for students booking travel for semesters abroad.

The application integrates data from third-party organisations to make booking and arranging travel a one-stop shop. This includes integrating government data from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that provides warnings and other travel alerts, as well as data from the university's booking portal that allows users to reserve tickets and accommodation directly within the application.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Dušan Janković