The great APAC customer visit tour – Part 1, New Zealand

With both Alison Spencer and myself coming to attend and participate in Talis Insight APAC 2016, it seemed a great opportunity to use this visit to the Antipodes to also visit with our universities in APAC. For Alison, who lived in Melbourne for 2 years, she already had a very good relationship with all of our customers in the region, but for myself it was a good opportunity to meet some for the first time and put faces to names in others. For the customers we wanted the opportunity to check in, understand their university strategy, how they are getting on in their various stages of rollout with Talis Aspire and to give them an overview of where Talis is headed.
It was very well worth it because we kicked off our New Zealand tour of 4 universities in 3 days in Auckland, visiting both the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology in the same day. We then got ourselves a hire car, drove to Hamilton to visit The University of Waikato. Following that, we got a another flight to Wellington, (I was particularly excited upon arriving to Wellington airport to see Gandalf riding the great eagle Gwaihir, geek alert…I know).
We visited Victoria University of Wellington the next day, and I’d been told about the amazing views of Wellington that could be seen from the library but unfortunately, this was the first non-gloriously sunny day I had spent in New Zealand, it was raining and misty and visibility was poor. This visit is followed by another flight to Melbourne, where we will base ourselves to meet our Victorian and NSW universities prior to Talis Insight APAC 2016 conference.
We’ve had some great conversations and its been good to understand strategic direction, challenges and just how our universities are progressing or beginning their journey with Talis Aspire in New Zealand. I look forward to seeing and speaking with more universities at Talis Insight APAC 2016 and also on the remaining legs of our tour around Melbourne and Brisbane.