Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Document Searches take Seconds not Minutes with ‘One-Stop Shop’ Information Portal
Country:UK
Industry:Education
Customer Profile
Colchester Institute, the largest further education college in Essex, has over 140 full-time and 700 part-time courses for its 9,500 students. It works with employers to promote vocational education and training opportunities.
Business Situation
Colchester Institute wanted to unlock the value of its information assets by integrating sources of data from multiple network locations, including file shares, Intranets and Microsoft® Exchange public folders.
Solution
Civica implemented a new ‘one-stop shop’ information management system for Colchester Institute, using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Windows 2003 and Microsoft Exchange 2000 with Microsoft Active Directory.
Benefits
Integrates diverse information sources
One-stop shop portal for data
Searches take seconds not minutes
Eases collaborative working
Helps meet targets for continued funding / “Our system should be much more stable and easy to manage when we are using the full functionality of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. It is already far easier to find things.”
Stephen Tanner, Head of IT Services, Colchester Institute
Colchester Institute, the largest vocational education college in Essex with 9,500 students on two campuses, wanted to unlock the value of its information assets and put its accumulated data to much better use. The college has traditionally used multiple network locations to store administrative data, including file servers, intranets and Microsoft Exchange Public Folders. Civica, a Microsoft strategic education partner, worked with the college on a pre-release pilot, using Microsoft SharePoint™ Portal Server 2003, to start to centralise and personalise business information for lecturers and administrators. Users now have the potential to locate information quickly and from a variety of sources through a ‘one-stop shop’ portal, thereby maximising the value of the data available in the college. It’s envisaged that SharePoint Portal Server 2003 will significantly contribute towards Colchester Institute achieving best practice in liaising with employers and more easily meeting the targets on which its government funding depends.
Situation
Colleges of higher and further education are under growing pressure from the government and its educational agencies to ensure that managers make effective use of data for current and future planning. Meeting government targets is the key to continued funding by the Learning and Skills Council. Yet unless colleges are well organised in IT, the sheer burden of paperwork surrounding OFSTED inspections can become a handicap and prevent lecturers from spending as much time as possible teaching.
Colchester Institute, the biggest college for vocational education in Essex, was no exception. The college, with 9,500 students and 480 staff spread across two sites in Colchester and Clacton, is the first choice provider of top quality vocational education and training to learners in north-east Essex and the surrounding area. Traditionally, the college used multiple network locations to store data, including file servers, Intranets and Microsoft Exchange public folders.
Stephen Tanner, Head of IT Services, Colchester Institute, says: “We needed to disseminate business and administrative information more easily and share information between our different systems so that data would be more readily accessible to our lecturers and administrative staff. It will also be important for us to maximise time and resources by achieving a single Web gateway for each user.”
Colchester Institute was already using Microsoft technology, but as part of its strategy to maximise the information assets available to the organisation it was keen to implement a Web-based document sharing and collaboration portal. Tanner says: “We had lots of useful material, but some of it had been forgotten or lost. We wanted a powerful search tool to unlock the value of the data that we had, but in order for this to work we needed to bring in a flexible, searchable ‘umbrella’ view over our information stores.”
Solution
Civica, a Microsoft strategic education partner, recommended that Colchester Institute take part in a pre-release pilot project using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003. As one of the most experienced specialist providers of software and services to the public sector, Civica helped the college in June 2003 to devise a project plan. See comment.
Olaf Akkerman, Director of Professional Services, Civica, takes up the story. “The core strategy was to create a ‘one-stop shop,’ so that users had a single portal for all their applications and general information requirements, and no longer needed to go to multiple systems. I believe that the pilot clearly demonstrated that SharePoint Portal Server 2003 could support that vision.”
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables enterprises to develop an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams and knowledge so that people can take advantage of relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently.
However, Akkerman says that in addition to the front-end portal, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 was the right solution for Colchester Institute because of its search and indexing capacity. “It’s more of a tool than an out-of-the-box product,” he says. “Staff will be more productive by having immediate access to up-to-date, relevant information.”
Web Parts will enable users to assemble a view of complementary information from multiple sources, including customer relationship management systems, Microsoft Outlook®, file shares, and Web sites.
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 will also be used to enable lecturers and administrators to share knowledge. Teams can easily make the content in their Microsoft Windows sites discoverable through the portal by browsing or searching. Portal users can publish documents to the rest of the organisation by adding them to the public view of their personal sites.
Benefits
Integrates Diverse Information Sources
Colchester Institute has enabled its lecturers and administrators to access documents in diverse storage systems from a single point of entry, using SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Some 30-40 staff are already using the system and this will increase to more than 500 people within 18 months. The portal is not used for teaching, as the college operates a separate virtual learning environment. However, it is starting to be used by curriculum managers for collaborative projects and performance monitoring.
Tanner says: “There is more work to be done to complete the divisions and topics in the index, but it has already helped to reinforce the message that the whole organisation needs to take ownership of our data.”
Searches in Seconds Not Minutes
The industry-leading search technology in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables users to find and reuse timely and relevant information from multiple sources, without needing help from system administrators.
In the past, the ability to trace a report or key document often depended on a single individual’s own knowledge of where it was filed. Now the automated search function can easily encompass Microsoft Exchange Public Folders, Lotus Notes, Windows SharePoint Services sites and databases. The technology can find more than just documents and Web sites: SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides access to people and teams.
Tanner says: “Our system should be much more stable and easy to manage when we are using the full functionality of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. It is already far easier to find things. I spent five minutes looking for a document in the public folders and gave up. In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, I tried the search facilities and found the document in seconds.”
Enables Better Group Working
Colchester Institute is in a much better position to share knowledge across the organisation and with its external partners by using SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Its most recent OFSTED report commented favourably on the college’s productive working relationships with its local partnerships, which the college wants to improve even further, through new ways of working.
Tanner says that by using Web Parts, Colchester Institute will be able to plug in to more third-party applications. It will benefit from better collaboration between work groups and by creating self-service portals for staff and partners. Because SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is easy to use, it can be deployed as an extranet where documents can be shared with an external partner.
Helps College Hit Targets for Funding
Every college of higher and further education in the UK undergoes regular monitoring from OFSTED, the government’s independent inspection agency. Colleges must also meet government targets to ensure a continued stream of funding from the Learning and Skills Council.
Colchester Institute has been rated as “effective” by OFSTED, but nevertheless lecturers and administrators face a huge burden of paperwork and bureaucracy to prepare for future inspections. Tanner says: “By using SharePoint Portal Server 2003, we should be able to reduce the amount of time spent on routine administration and better utilise information to meet government targets and ensure our continued funding.”
Tanner plans to use SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to enable local employers to access information about the college more easily, as well as to quickly gather information on the progress their staff are making on part-time or full-time courses at the college. “It should help us to adopt best practice in working with local employers, whereas previously this might be confined to just a phone call every now and then” says Tanner.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft® Windows Server SystemTM is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows ServerTM operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management. For more information about
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