University of Technology, Sydney sees 45% fall in drop off rate

High ranking

The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) was recently ranked as the Highest performing university in Australia under 50 years old, and amongst the top 150 universities in the world (Source: Rankings and Ratings). UTS Open is the first step in a broader initiative to create a high-quality marketplace for postgraduate learning, by aggregating the diverse range of existing avenues for learning that UTS offers.

With an overarching postgraduate on-ramp strategy, UTS needed to stand out in the extremely competitive postgraduate online space. The task was to create a compelling customer-centric website that clearly represents the UTS Open positioning in the market and connects with the target audience by offering them the content and experience they are looking for.

The foundation of the solution for UTS Open was built upon Optimizely, chosen for it’s powerful experience-driven commerce and content management features.

The foundation of the solution for UTS Open was built upon the Optimizely framework, which provides the powerful 1-2 punch of world class content management features coupled with functionality that delivers on the promise of experience-driven commerce, served up and supported via the Optimizely DXP cloud platform.

The platform stack (mapped to the CAUDIT Higher Education Enterprise Architecture Reference model)

• Curriculum Creation and Lifecycle: CIS
• Learner Recruitment Marketing: Optimizely CMS + Commerce + Insight + Advance, Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• Learner Identity Management: Azure B2C, Azure Directory, ADFS, Okta, Optimizely Commerce + Insight, Salesforce Education Cloud, Canvas LMS
• Learner Recruitment, Management & Retention: Optimizely CMS + Commerce + Insight, Salesforce Education Cloud, Service Now
• Content production & Scheduling: Optimizely CMS + Commerce, Canvas LMS
• Learning Delivery: Optimizely CMS + Commerce, Canvas LMS
• Product Performance & Reporting: Oracle Financial system, SecurePay, Optimizely Commerce, Canvas LMS, Salesforce Education Cloud, Google Analytics + Data Studio
• Platform Integration: Dell Boomi, Optimizely CMS + Commerce, Canvas LMS, Salesforce Community Cloud

With a complex technology landscape of existing and new key systems, UTS Open required a new approach to integration design for introducing commerce capability into such an ecosystem.

Optimizely Commerce provided the solution to playing the role of the Source of Truth/Master for

• Product creation
• Product authoring and definition
• Product pricing data….for some product types, whilst acting as a Replica for other product types, consuming product information from various systems and sources.

The authoring complexities across different product owners for different product types, across multiple faculties, schools and business lines across the whole of university, coupled with different levels of integration with multiple systems to guarantee fulfillment of products, provide customer support and meet compliance and reporting requirements, dictated a new conceptual approach was necessary.

By extending and customising the model of products and variants we were able to still retain flexibility, needed to meet future needs anticipated for the platform, based on LXT rollout of the 2027 roadmap.

The solution delivered an ongoing, evolving customer-centric marketplace that offers a streamlined user experience, catering for each stage of a learner’s journey as a customer purchasing funnel.

Sudo Roux delivered flexible, real-world and personalised learning experiences that create a global community of adaptive learners and thinkers

Dean MacDonald

Head of New Business Systems, University of Technology, Sydney

100% of returning visitors converted

Jan 2020 saw a 400% increase in returning visitors and associated revenue when compared with launch month (Dec 2019). Most interesting is that 100% of returning visitors converted.

Further development through COVID-19

• Phase Three - Microcredential Courses, worth 3-6 credit points which carry Required Prior Learning (RPL) consideration
• Phase Four - Packaging of the above for Enterprise / Private Cohorts

The flexibility of Optimizely commerce and the power of Optimizely personalization, has helped unlock the potential of UTS learning catalogue - at scale - to help drive the enterprise learning program within the greater UTS environment. UTS now have a single shop front that is B2C, B2B2C, and B2B. It’s given all areas of the University a toolbox to convert new business with flexible engagement, experience, and remuneration models.

Further benefits UTS saw included:

• Using the power of personalisation and the extensibility of Optimizely Commerce to support multiple catalogues within the same shopfront environment enabling UTS to deliver the first tranch of their enterprise learning strategy to enable to private cohorts to be bulk enrolled base corporate
• A single gateway to enterprise learning customers
• Personalised experiences (shop front look/branding/content) direct to enterprise customers
• First in class approach represents a new revenue stream for University in a context of declining revenue sector due to COVID19
• Each item of courseware has a business and technical approach
• Optimizely Visitor Intelligence facilitating:
• Segmentation of user groups to personalise the experience and display the same courseware with tailored pricing and variable currency per cohort
• Frictionless onboarding of enterprise users through preassigned ‘credit point’ system as the payment solution
• Courseware selections determined at both an enterprise and user level
• Volume Discounts for enterprise clients 
• Salesforce Integration to marketing personalisation
• LMS and Optimizely Commerce Integration