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 Ken, AURA Consultant
Educational institutions present unique challenges in IT. Unlike a traditional company where one department calls the shots, colleges and universities sometimes act as smaller, independent divisions of a larger company. Each department has specific needs and its own culture. Individual departments have their own accomplishments and attract potential students by reputation.
AURA recently worked with such an institution. Because of the financial constraints most colleges work under, the college's website was created and managed by students or employees with available time. It lacked the consistent look and feel of a unified organization. Every department could put in place any pages they liked without standardization. As with any website that has handed off many times without a specific design focus, users gained a different perspective on the college depending on the department visited. The result became impossible to navigate and did not match the school's well-defined branding image.
Beyond facing the technology issues, the AURA team faced a people challenge as well. The solution had to result in an attractive, consistent, manageable site that accentuated our customer's free-thinking culture and spirit. To tackle this challenge head on, AURA first involved every department in the college by holding focus groups to find out everyone's real needs. The AURA team sought common denominators among the groups to find a solution to fit more needs than anyone thought possible. Once everyone was involved in and committed to the process, the campus created, reviewed, and approved the design focus.
The end solution? AURA created a content management system using JSP and SQL Server. This solution allowed users to be flexible in their design and content while maintaining standards through automated enforcement and workflow validation. In addition, the system allowed departments to share information using photo galleries, campus calendar, and news subsystems. The old saying goes, "You can't make everyone happy all the time..." In this case, AURA did by finding just the right mix of technology and personality.
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