Background
Xavier University has made a significant investment in web technology applications to enable collaboration among their student population. This web application was successfully implemented, has been very well received, and is fully utilized by being specifically geared to support student needs. To build upon this success, the University recently embarked on a project to launch a similar portal geared to the needs of their faculty and staff utilizing SharePoint.
Xavier contacted Ascendum to provide the SharePoint skill and expertise to make this faculty web portal an outstanding success.
Business Challange
- Xavier had a staff that was trained in SharePoint but had no experience working with the product
- Xavier had an aggressive deadline to meet for the pilot implementation
- The SharePoint work that had been completed to date by another firm was undocumented with little to no sharing of knowledge between the previous consulting firm and the Xavier
Ascendum Solution
- Helped Xavier's IT department and faculty articulate requirements for collaboration and gauge the fit of SharePoint to satisfy those requirements
- Made hardware, software, and architectural recommendations regarding where and how the SharePoint portal would be most effectively implemented, by leveraging existing data, tools and information
- Worked with Xavier's implementation team to integrate these requirements with their current systems and to identify opportunities where the SharePoint architecture best met their needs
- In this engagement model, the Ascendum team worked with Xavier on a weekly basis for 1 to 2.5 days/week, for information sharing and direction-setting, while the Xavier team did the implementation, integration and system administration. This model ensured that the Xavier team gained the SharePoint knowledge that they will use in the next phases of the project
