WA Sport CIO looks forward to life without data centres

Cann recently flicked the switch on a new online grants application system to allow WA athletes and clubs to apply online for one-off funding from the state government.

The system runs on Microsoft’s Dynamics in the backend with a SharePoint frontend, and was built and deployed within three months. 

The team had to move fast to respond to an announcement by the state Minister for Sport earlier this year, of two new subsidies programs for sports equipment and travel costs.

The subsidies required an online application solution to manage an influx of around 400 applications in two weeks.

He decided to upgrade a version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM used internally and re-purpose it for the new online grants system.

Cann described the prior system as a "vanilla, out-of-the-box" solution that "hadn’t been implemented properly."

"We had to upgrade to the latest version and rebuild it from the ground up, and put in the business processes we needed to handle customer relations.”

The department had been using a home-grown grants management system to store grants data, which wasn’t sufficient for the new subsidies scheme.

The manual process involved the entering of paper applications into the system, which Cann discovered were then being replicated across eight other bespoke systems.

The decision was made to consolidate all these systems into Dynamics, but given Cann’s lack of resources, the department partnered with IT consultancy Velrada for the consolidation and system upgrade.

Cann now plans to use Dynamics as the foundation of the department’s CRM and core business functions into the future.

“If we look at the core business processes, we’ll pick one off at a time and move them into Dynamics - things like event management, project management etc - all that can be done in there, and linked together,” he said.

“That information currently sits in people’s heads or in diaries and multiple databases. One staff member carries around a box of diaries with her, they are full of information that needs to be recorded in a CRM.

“My goal is to have a before photo of her carrying the box of diaries and an after photo of her with an iPad.”