About

CPA Australia is a professional association, with more than 105,000 members in the finance, accounting and business sectors in Australia and internationally.  It represents its members’ interests with government, industry and the public, provides education and training and markets the CPA Australia designation.  CPA Australia’s Web site plays a central role in its communication with members.

Challenge

CPA Australia’s first-generation Web site had grown large and unwieldy, requiring extensive manual intervention for many basic processes.  With more than 10,000 hand-coded ASP pages there was a real need to streamline the delivery of content.  While implementing a content management system, CPA Australia also redesigned the Web site to improve its usability.  The redesign was aimed at giving the user quick and easy access to the information and services they require, and focussed on designing effective navigation, powerful searching capabilities and the ability for users to personalize their Web site experience.

Key requirements

• Users with no technical expertise should be able to enter Web site content
• The system should be able to publish content quickly, in response to real-time events
• The system should integrate with existing back-end systems to provide personalization on the Web site
• Users should be able to store their Web site preferences, allowing for a highly-targeted user experience
• The system must be 100% stable, allowing continual operation, with fail over capability
• Information on the Web site must be accessible quickly, via both navigation and search capability
• The system should allow the integration of over 20 web-based applications (.NET and ASP)

Requirements for RedDot CMS

• Quick implementation
• Ease of use
• Workflow capabilities to ensure content is reviewed prior to being published
• Content streamlining

Requirements for RedDot

• Advanced search
• Scalability and stability
• User-defined personalization
• Integration with a legacy system

Solution

CPA Australia initially looked at a number of content management systems, but decided on RedDot CMS because of value for money and advanced features.  Once the decision was made, workshops were held to finalize the functionality and training was provided in the RedDot CMS and LiveServer.

This allowed CPA Australia’s development team to configure the systems to meet their requirements and, once this was completed, content was migrated  into the CMS.

RedDot LiveServer was used to provide the personalization and user registration functionality for the Web site.  In addition, the Verity K2 search engine bundled with the application provided an extensive and flexible search capability.  Using RedDot LiveServer, CPA Australia’s members were able to customize their entire Web site experience by setting up their own ‘quick links’ as well as a personalized home page tailored to their specific areas of interest. 

RedDot supported CPA Australia through Web site development to launch, offering technical support to assist in synchronizing with its  legacy system and configuring the CMS.

Once the development was completed, RedDot’s engineers streamlined the operation and configuration of the Web site, delivering a noticeable improvement in performance.

Connection to a legacy system
CPA Australia uses a back-end system (iMIS) to manage its user data.  This data is frequently updated by CPA Australia’s staff and the Web site users, requiring a high level of synchronization between iMIS and RedDot LiveServer. This synchronization process uses the advanced import/export capabilities that are provided out-of-the-box with RedDot LiveServer. The process continues to work effectively more than one year after the launch date.

Solution - highlights

• Authors are free to concentrate on content, not technical issues
• Content is available quickly
• Web site team no longer have to build Web site content pages manually and have more time to focus on creating and editing high-value content for CPA Australia’s members
• Synchronization is seamless with back-end system (iMIS)

Results

The site was delivered on time and on budget, receiving very positive feedback, particularly in relation to navigability, search capacity and visual design.

By automating the content management process, significant efficiencies have been gained, allowing the Web site team to dedicate more time to enriching content.  The performance level of  RedDot CMS, along with the failover capability, have also significantly reduced the amount of time dedicated to maintenance and management.

Results - highlights

• Current user database of approx 105,000 (up from 91,000 users on launch)
• Stable system provides high level of uptime
• Positive feedback from users of the Web site
• Web site visitor sessions increased 35% in the first year since the launch