The student association AOF strengthens its course administration with help from Cegal

Cegal has developed an application and "My page" solution on Microsoft Azure for the student association AOF. It makes administration more efficient, provides increased data quality and improves customer service.

AOF is a nationwide student association with a focus on adult education and training. The association is headquartered in Oslo and has member organizations that cover the entire country from north to south.

AOF was founded in 1931 by Haakon Lie, politician and party secretary in the Labor Party. Today, AOF is politically independent and is a competence partner for businesses. Every year, 20,000 employees, employee representatives, safety representatives and managers take a number of courses, education and training.

After many years of constantly using and developing new solutions, AOF's IT system for course administration was ready for replacement. The system was built using old and outdated technology, and over the years the important business system had become slow and cumbersome to use. Maintenance and further development were both time consuming and complex. In addition, a number of adaptations and integrations had been made to solutions that were no longer updated.

Automation and efficiency

AOF needed a new business system that both made the administration efficient, provided good insight into the course and education activities and that could be used for many years to come.

With the new course administration system Universum, we will automate old manual processes, and gain much better insight into the course and training activities.

Rune Sand, AOF

Cegal was chosen to develop the new course administration system and "My page", which is a web solution for customers. Rune Sand (pictured below) says that the reason why Cegal was chosen was that they operated the old course administration system, KAS, that AOF already had.

It meant that we had a supplier who already knew us. There was no off-the-shelf product we could buy, so the new system had to be developed specifically for us. So it was natural to choose Cegal again.

Rune Sand, Manager AOF Arbeidsliv, Studieforbundet AOF

Universum, the new administration application, has been specially developed for AOF on Microsoft's cloud platform Azure. Among other things, it ensures that the solution scales when there is a lot of traffic. In addition, the technological platform is always up to date and it is possible to add new services based on future new technology.

Large and critical business system

Project manager Inger Bugge in Cegal says that with the development of Universum, AOF used the opportunity to go through their own routines and work processes and has automated a number of tasks that were previously done manually.

"In addition, we have structured the application so that we ensure better quality of the data."

The new systems have been developed using the flexible Scrum methodology and Bugge says that AOF has been very involved in the design of the new applications and "My page". The solutions have provided a better structure for courses and studies, increased the quality of data and the exchange of information between "My Page" and Universum flows better. With the help of Microsoft Power BI, AOF can compile data and gain better insight into, for example, how popular different courses are.

In the long term, the new system will also make it easier for the member organizations to handle courses and students themselves, without having to go through employees at the head office.

"Universum is a large and critical business system for us. Therefore, a number of integrations have been made with other systems. These include two-way communication with the financial system and aof.no", says Rune Sand