University of Westminster case study

Requirements

The University of Westminster is a modern university based in central London.

 

University of Westminster logo

 

Attracting both national and international students, while providing high value added services to the current student population, the University needed a flexible tool to address the needs of a large web editing population with different levels of web editing skills. The main objectives of the web site are:

 

  • Marketing of the courses provided by ten schools
  • Provision of personalized experience to the current staff
    and students
  • Repository of information and gateway to the additional University web services

 

Previously the University had two separate sites providing respectively internet and intranet presence.

 

These sites were maintained by a large number of academic and administrative staff using Microsoft FrontPage. This however, while providing a workable solution, quickly highlighted various problems:

  • Difficulty to maintain consistency
  • Difficulty to keep control of what was published
  • High training costs

Solution

The University looked at the market place to evaluate alternative Content Management solutions. They started with a short list of ten vendors, and then narrowed it down to two.
 
They did a more detailed evaluation, got product demonstrations, had the products road tested by staff from one of the Computing departments, and ultimately selected the Enterprise Version of the Immediacy Content Management System.

Why Immediacy?

 
Above all, it was ease of use of the system. In addition to that the University had invested in programming skills that fitted well with the Immediacy platform and the ease of integration of the existing application set with the Immediacy Content Management Server was crucial to the choice.
 

The University has, to date, rolled out the Immediacy Content Management System to:

  • Core corporate pages fusing internet and intranet into a single site using the existing single sign on technology.
  • Seven School sites (aiming to complete the other three by the spring)
  • Ten central administrative units

 

Key results so far include:

  • Content owned by areas,
  • More updates, more frequently,
  • Clearer structure to the information now far easier to find what you need on the system
  • Reduced training and support costs

 

Feedback from users:

 

"Creating web pages is easy now. I don't have to worry about the design and the navigation, I just add them and the system takes care of the rest."

 

Feedback from managers:

 

"I finally can see what's going on. I can delegate the editing while keeping a look on what goes on line. The e-mail notification is a real bonus."

 

westminster university screenshot

Implementation

The following illustrates the time-frame within which Immediacy was installed and operated:

  • Purchase agreed September 2003
  • Implementation 4 weeks
  • Testing 1 week
  • Training 3 days
  • Content Migration (three pilot sites) 6 weeks
  • Roll-out (three pilot sites) February 2004
  • Roll-out (corporate site) May 2004
  • Roll-out (other Schools and Admin units) ongoing at a rate of two/three per month

Features

These are some of the key Immediacy features activated on the University of Westminster sites:
  • News + Archiving of news or other sections
  • Page Live and Expiry Dates
  • Meta Data
  • Word/Excel Import
  • Membership & Page Properties
  • Usage tracking
  • Form builder
  • Calendaring
  • Polls and surveys
  • External database integration