Business Challege: University, updating the school?s Web site content was becoming a challenge.  Only a small handful of faculty and staff acquainted with HTML and FTP could edit their pages on the Web site.  Otherwise all content updating requests came through the Webmaster?s office, which was creating a bottleneck.  Another frustration for everyone was the huge task to get more than 100 people up to speed with HTML and FTP, plus the cost was substantial.  Because people couldn?t update the Web site themselves, they weren?t able to emotionally invest in it, and the site was beginning to suffer.  Other challenges include:

Inflexibility: thousands of individual web pages

 

Software costs: every developer had to have a copy of software

Training problems: took several hours, too complex for non-technical users to grasp

Look and feel control: no way to prevent someone from violating the site?s look and feel

Speed: editing was slow

Reach: editing could only be done on campus

Functionality: pages were ?frozen? in place

 

Solution: A Content Management System empowers universities with a cost-effective system that allows non-technical users to add pages to the Web site.  Now content, faculty and staff can personally invest in the Web site with updates that effect positive change.  Since those at the department level are generally more in tune than the Webmaster with their portion of the university?s many constituencies, content has the possibility to be more relevant and effective than what might be created at a higher level in the organization.

The CMS program allows for timely, relevant information to be shared across the campus, information about organizations, activities, and news to faculty, staff and students is communicated in an efficient, effective manner.  There are also multiple content contributors across the campus.  Other benefits include:

 

Cost: within budget constraints

Ease of use: minimal training requirements for numerous non-technical content contributors

Features: offer content work flow

Platform: content management solution

Maintenance: low maintenance product

 

 

Value Recieved: Using the Content Management System can fundamentally open doors to a whole new level of excellence for universities, employees and students and all Web site visitors.  A major goal of this system is to give editing capabilities to faculty and staff without requiring them to have an understanding of Web technologies to do so.  Academic departments can add pages about time-sensitive events without having to wait for someone else to mount the content.  Faculty can post course materials, syllabi, academic papers, and other information.  Web site accessibility has dramatically increased which is very important for the institution.