Inspiring more young women to pursue technology careers

HerTechPath (HTP) is a grass-roots community of IT professionals in South Australia, who are striving to celebrate and inspire women and girls to consider rewarding and diverse careers in the technology sector.

With the Australian technology industry facing a real problem with low numbers of female graduates entering the sector, HTP is challenging this reality, by visiting high schools to speak to students about the potential of a career in the technology sector.

HTP also offers regular informal networking events that members can attend as part of their membership, providing opportunities to build their professional networks, profile and connections.

Challenge

HTP’s volunteer committee knew it wasn’t viable to continue managing school briefing requests, events, and memberships manually. The time-consuming effort involved was not sustainable on top of everyone’s full time jobs.

DXC first became involved with HTP when two of its employees joined the non-for-profit as members. After joining the group, they identified a need to improve organisational efficiency through a digital transformation. A new modern platform offering a simpler process for schools to request a briefing, an automated event management solution, and improved self-service to information was needed.

Solution

Digital transformation experts from the DXC Digital Transformation Centre (DTC) in Adelaide were approached for initial ideas and then assisted the HTP board to build strategies and roadmaps, by first understanding the business problem and then developing incremental solutions.

Leveraging an Agile approach with defined sprints, incubation of new ideas was made possible. Using two-week sprints and regular progress meetings with the HTP board, ideas were fleshed out quicker with the approach ensuring lower risk for all involved. Following a comprehensive ideation and development process, the DTC team created a robust platform, with a range of functionality.

A comprehensive automated website using a dual cloud solution leveraging Azure App Services for website hosting and AWS Cloud Services for enabling the business services, ensured the best result at the lowest cost.

Eventbrite was embedded into the website to provide online event management and ticketing services. Stripe’s payment processing platform was also embedded to facilitate the payment process.

The DXC team consulted with HTP board members throughout the entire journey from concept and design, through to testing and piloting.

The project was embraced by DXC as part of an industry participation plan required by the South Australian Government. As HTP is a not-for-profit organisation, DXC contributes to the development, on-going maintenance and support for the website.

Results

Since launching the website at an event in Adelaide, the HTP board has noticed an influx of school briefing bookings. The event itself generated considerable interest in the tech sector, and membership of HTP has also seen steady growth since – which, in turn, will support the long-term sustainability of the not-for-profit.

HTP are enjoying the extensive functionality of their new platform, the time-savings individual committee members are experiencing, and the other benefits that automation brings.

HTP are aiming to brief 10,000 students in the first three years. Judging by the influx of school briefing bookings through the website since it went live, this will easily be achieved.

Click here to read the full case study.

Click here to find out more about DXC’s Digital Transformation Centres.