Phil Sefton, Director of Client and Online Services at Charles Sturt University, explains why IntaChange was the obvious choice for their new change management programme.

Charles Sturt University (CSU), is Australia's largest provider of distance education with over 33,000 enrolments and 1500 staff.

The Division of Information Technology with around 150 staff is responsible for delivering a full suite of IT services to staff and students ranging from traditional student laboratories through to the delivery of a comprehensive array of online services.

The use of Technology services has been highly coupled with the provision of distance education such that everything from enrolment to results release is provided fully online.

In 2003, CSU began mapping a path for the introduction of the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) service methodology and in 2004 implemented Change Management (CM) as the first step in the process.

One of the key requirements of the CM project was to select an application that was both easy to implement and use but yet provided the flexibility to suit the particular process flows that CSU required. Further the need to 'tune' an application on the fly meant that IntaChange soon became an obvious choice.

Intasoft, the developers of IntaChange, have their headquarters in the UK, but despite the distance between UK and Australia, this proved to be no problem at all, due to the web based nature of IntaChange.

The application was first tested using Intasoft's own platform and basic process flows were evaluated. Simple application sharing and software basic training was provided and minor issues solved.

The subsequent installation and setup was a breeze with the application moving quickly from development to production.

Today, IntaChange is used to manage all non standard changes within the Division. The compliance with ITIL requirements meant that the transition from design to production was quick and painless and aligned well with our project requirements.

Key to the introduction was the ease at which users could be trained in the product. Being web based was a major advantage with no installation required at the users end. The use of basic web features meant that most users already had good skills and simply needed to understand the fundamentals of the product and the process of moving a change request from one stage to another.

Since October 2004, changes have flowed smoothly through IntaChange all with process flows based on their ITIL categories of minor, medium, major and emergency changes.

The flexibility has allowed CSU to make changes to the process flow easily and with minimal training for staff. The ability to control data entry, access rights to change and modify information and controls to ensure the right people enter the correct data at the appropriate time all lead to a product that suits the University's needs well.