Challenge: After years of growth the Howard Community College Website was becoming overrun with outdated and sometimes contradictory content. Like many institutions with decentralized groups of Web authors, the look and feel of the Website also varied significantly from department to department. Reliance on Microsoft FrontPage and homegrown content management tools had simplified authoring, but had not addressed the school’s need to deliver the best possible Web experience for its most important site visitors – prospective students.

For today’s students, the so-called “millennial generation,” a school’s Website is more than a collection of content. The relationship between the student and Website is built upon information, design, value perception, trust – a sophisticated combination of brand and functional characteristics.

Key decision makers at Howard began hearing feedback from prospective students about the quality of the school’s Website. Recognizing how important the Website had become as a recruitment and enrollment tool, the school determined it first needed to understand and evaluate its requirements for a new Website before investing in design, technology and implementation services.

Solution: After assessing a variety of offerings, Howard Community College hired Systems Alliance partner, CentreTEK Solutions to assess its requirements and deploy the school’s new Website. Working in collaboration with a Web steering team composed of personnel from Howard Community’s IT, admissions, HR, PR and continuing education departments, three key goals were identified for the redeployment:

• User-centric design, navigation and content focused on meeting the needs of primary stakeholders and visitors.
• Enhanced administration, incorporating policies and procedures for content and site creation, review, approvals and publishing.
• Reduced business risks associated with site uptime, availability and security.

To address these goals, CentreTEK proposed SiteExecutive as the Web content management platform for Howard Community College.  SiteExecutive has been successfully deployed by a number of colleges and universities, including Johns Hopkins University and Loyola College of Maryland. After visiting and getting feedback from SiteExecutive users at these institutions, Howard selected SiteExecutive. Key factors influencing the decision included:

• Ability to provide highly controlled, yet easy-to-use content authoring capabilities to non-technical personnel – enabling timely content updates without sacrificing brand integrity
• Effective process for managing user permissions and approval workflow
• Proven performance to meet Howard’s availability and uptime requirements

During the SiteExecutive deployment, Howard Community IT personnel worked with CentreTEK to scrub existing content, reducing the size of the site from 28,000 to 2,500 pages. Online enrollment was re-engineered and simplified into a six step process which uses a SiteExecutive generated form for capturing admissions. Overall, significant effort was invested in developing a site that would meet the needs of prospective students and create more value for the college.

Results: The SiteExecutive deployment has given Howard Community College the accessible, user-centric Website it was looking for.

Commenting on the deployment, Rick Pollard, director, Technology Services for Howard Community College, said, “With SiteExecutive, we’ve gained control over the content lifecycle. As a result our Website offers more accessible and accurate content, which is driving more Website visits, more online applications and more success for our school.”

Since launching the new Website, Howard Community has seen a dramatic increase in online applications. This reduces paperwork and administrative costs, and improves the accuracy of admissions data.

By leveraging the SiteExecutive workflow capabilities, content authors across the Howard Community campus spend less time waiting for content review and authorization, encouraging more timely submissions. In fact, Web content currency has become one of the metrics the Howard Community College IT department tracks as an ongoing evaluation of Website effectiveness. Pages considered “dynamic,” which account for approximately 25 percent of overall content, must be updated every 30 days.

Lessons learned and next steps: Since completing the SiteExecutive deployment, Pollard has been pleasantly surprised at how easy it has become for content owners to create content and manage the site. “We’ve had great success getting our content owners up and running on SiteExecutive – it’s very easy to learn and use.”

Going forward, Pollard and his team will be making enhancements to the current college Website. Current plans call for reorganization of course information and adding online chat capabilities and a virtual tour to highlight campus programs and services. In addition, Pollard is planning to roll out a new intranet on SiteExecutive. This will provide faculty and staff with tools and information to simplify their daily routines, including payroll, professional development resources, news feeds from the Chronicle of Higher Education, direct access to technology tools, and a document repository.