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Organization Overview 

• Stevens Institute of Technology educates and inspires students to acquire the knowledge needed to lead in the creation, application and management of technology.
• The undergraduate curriculum is built on a multidisciplinary core in the applied sciences, computer science, business, engineering and the liberal arts. The graduate programs educate professionals to advance in industries influenced by technology.
• Research at Stevens strengthens education, and a scholarly and supportive community of faculty, students, staff, alumni, trustees and other friends fulfills the mission.
  

Situation

• Stevens had implemented an open-source Web content management solution but found that it did not provide the support infrastructure or reliability needed to maintain a compelling website.
• Website content was not well organized making it difficult to recruit and attract new business from Steven's two main cash flow centers: graduate and undergraduate students.
• Administration of the CMS was managed centrally, placing a burden on the IT department and preventing business users from taking ownership of the website.
  

Business Challenge

• Stevens needed a Web content management solution that would enable the organization to decentralize the management of the CMS and empower business users to take over the day-to-day management of the content management system.
• Stevens needed to simplify access to information for both students and faculty and better organize content while improving its overall Web presence to better attract prospective students.
• Stevens needed to enable business users to quickly and easily make changes to the website (without writing code) to improve productivity and encourage user adoption.
  

Solution

• Stevens did a rigorous search for a CMS and evaluated numerous vendors, including: Ektron, FarCry and HotBanana. The primary drivers were cost, flexibility, and reliability. CommonSpot was the best fit across the board—and was the ideal solution based on its long standing reputation and solid references that spoke highly of the company, and its customer service.
• Stevens implemented CommonSpot and leveraged the extensive roles and permission within the system to give business users the power to essentially run their own area of business on the Web. Business users have ownership rights to manage a site, subsite, page, or section of a page. And those users assign roles and permissions to their respective teams putting users in control in ways never previously experienced.
  

Benefits

• By moving away from an open-source content management solution and onto CommonSpot, Stevens gained the support infrastructure and system reliability it needed to manage its website content efficiently and effectively.
• Stevens empowered users to easily manage and organize website content, making the website much more user friendly and a better overall vehicle for recruiting new students, and communicating with existing students, faculty and alumni.