Veritec takes Canberra-based nonprofit to the digital age

Digital transformation consulting firm and Microsoft partner Veritec has helped Canberra-based nonprofit educator ACT Recovery College move to a digital course management platform.

Veritec developed the platform within Microsoft Power Platform within a six-week timeframe during the COVID-19 restrictions, and offered its services pro-bono.

Founded in 2019, ACT Recovery College offers free mental health, wellbeing and recovery education to adults over 18 years old within a non-judgemental space. It is led by the Mental Health Community Coalition ACT (MHCC ACT),the peak body representing the community managed mental health sector in the ACT, and is funded by the ACT government.

The college reached out to Veritec to help out its small IT team that relied on old, manual processes to manage day-to-day operations, including the use of paper-based forms and excel spreadsheets.

Veritec chief executive Greg Mace said the project was “really rewarding” for Veritec’s team to be involved since they were able to deliver the platform remotely during the isolation restrictions.

“ACT Recovery College plays an important role in the Canberra community and their dedicated team work tirelessly to deliver their services,” he said.

“When we first reviewed their processes and platforms it was clear that we were going to be able to save them a lot of time and create a far more engaging experience for their students by deploying Microsoft Power Platform.”

Mace added that since the college already used Office 365, Veritec was able to integrate the college’s existing tools with newer solutions from the Microsoft technology stack. “We built the solution as a Power App using Power Automate and Model Driven Apps,” he said.

The new platform has brought the following to ACT Recovery College:

• A scalable course and student management application allowing staff to add and manage courses
• Manage student, educator, course and enrolment information all in one place
• An automated processes that reduced the time taken for a new student to be added to the system – reducing the data entry process from 1 hour per student to 2 minutes
• Student engagement via emails sent directly from the application
• A customised dashboard that staff can use for reporting

ACT Recovery College student support officer Kylie Brewer said the application has allowed the college not to be tied up with time-intensive manual processes and focus on helping the community.

“We could not be happier with the work Veritec has delivered for us and are exceptionally grateful to them for volunteering their time and expertise to make this all possible in such a short amount of time,” Brewer said.

“They really took the time to understand our challenges and then provided a recommendation that would address those and do so much more.”