“ The feedback we have been getting from the industry is all the things we hoped it would be – it’s user friendly, it gives them what they want in terms of their work force planning and numbers. It allows them to work out what they need in terms of their production, their equipment and their people. „

- Dorothy Rao, Deputy CEO, SkillsDMC

Challenge

SkillsDMC’s legacy system was comprised of multiple HTML templates with the content managed by their developer. The structure was very simple and there was a lot of duplication required. The site was no longer able to meet the needs of its users.

Developing a new site was fraught with challenges. Being a non-regulatory body SkillsDMC could not mandate the use of this system. Instead the organisation has to rely on these services being well designed, easy to use and tailored to suit the needs of end-users to foster strong voluntary participation.

In addition, the majority of users are based in rural areas with varying degrees of server speed and accessibility. As a result, the website needed to be super-fast along with the application, Skills Maximiser.

Skills Maximiser was another challenge for SkillsDMC. It was time to take what was once paper-based and CD-ROM accessible and put the application online. The new application needed to be designed to work in conjunction with the website for data transfer, aggregation and analysis with the minimum of fuss and without the need to constantly duplicate information.

Sitecore CMS was used as the base platform as it best met the need for a scalable, flexible and easily updatable content management system.

Some goals SkillsDMC set as part of the site refresh and the application upgrade included:

Allowing easy distribution of the functionality to end users

• Quick access regardless of user location.
• Timely and consistent delivery of data and updates if and when required.

Centralisation of data

• Data stored online to allow aggregate reporting from company, regional, state and national level in a format that is presented to Federal Government Agencies.
• Provide value added features beyond the previous product format that allows SkillsDMC to extract intelligent data from the industry that can be provided to Federal Government Agencies managing the mining sector.

Improved functionality

• More efficient data management employing an intuitive user interface.
• Increase usage from companies to ensure greater awareness of the industry.

Extensible platform

• Leveraging the foundation work completed in Skills Maximiser.
• Future proof for functional enhancements.
• Integration and communication with other applications (namely corporate website and Skills Maximiser). 

Solution

SkillsDMC sought the expertise of Sitecore partner, Gruden to undertake the process of defining the business rules, workflow and goals for SkillsDMC with particular focus on the users’ requirements. The process included a detailed scoping phase, business requirements review and analysis, preparation of a functional specification and design and build/delivery.

The solution proposed included a Flex interface with a supporting administration system allowing for various levels of user access and privileges that provide functionality and reporting to national, regional and company levels, administered by the individual user's login account.

Sitecore was chosen as it could integrate well with Flex, back end systems and data synchronisation from their Skills Maximiser application as well as allowing for easy future upgrades.

After the website build, SkillsDMC wanted to update their CD ROM based training and skills management tool - Skills Maximiser. The brief was for Skills Maximiser to be adapted to allow data aggregation and information exchange between the website, the Sitecore CMS platforms and end-users in the field.

Before starting development of the application, Gruden planned and managed a comprehensive scoping and requirement gathering phase, involving multiple rounds of stakeholder and end user workshops that effectively laid the foundations for the specification and construction of the tool. Throughout the design and build phases the stakeholders and end users were regularly involved to validate and refine the approach. As part of this methodology, personas were developed whereby each type of user was given a unique name as a reference point to define their characteristics, experience levels, vocabulary and touch points to help the Gruden developers design and build the application in relation to the site.

Gruden developed a custom solution using Adobe Flex, the .NET MVC Framework and Sitecore CMS. The main focus was to make it easy for users who ranged from OH&S officers on construction sites in the CBD, to mine managers in the Kimberly to manage their data. An advanced permissions system allowed a wide range of organisations to roll out the system in a way that makes sense to their business. 

The project was developed in 3 key phases, including a scoping and definition phase and a two phased development and delivery of the application to users. The project commenced with the scoping and definition phases in October 2009 running for approx. 1 month. The first round of development and delivery commenced November 2009 and ran through till February 2010. The final phase commenced February through till July 2010.

Result

Three months after the site was launched adoption rates had exceeded expectations. Of the 60 largest mining companies, 42 were using the application across 57 sites. In just a short time since its launch there has been a sharp uptake of the system within the mining industry to over 80%.

The site is updated with new data from the Skills Maximiser application and has improved the efficiencies of both SkillsDMC in compiling and using the data and in turn has improved the bottom line of the companies using the system.

It has given the resource companies a quick and accurate method to plan their workforce in terms of competencies, production, equipment and people and has allowed SkillsDMC access to fast and accurate data to be used for Government advice and in their role as an advocate for the industry.

According to Dorothy Rao, Deputy CEO, SkillsDMC, "The feedback we have been getting from the industry is all the things we hoped it would be – it’s user friendly, it gives them what they want in terms of their work force planning and numbers. It allows them to work out what they need in terms of their production, their equipment and their people."

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients

• Blog module
• YAF forum module
• Custom export of data to CD Rom for aggregation / compilation / analysis