Ball State University Expands Use of Vignette Solutions to Power Additional Online Initiative

http://www.contentmanager.net/magazine/news_h8708_ball_state_university_expands_use_of_vignette.html

Vignette Corp. announced that longtime customer Ball State University, one of the nation's leading institutions of higher education, continues to expand its use of Vignette capabilities and products to drive organizational efficiency and support additional university organizations. Ball State's expansion of its Vignette relationship follows its established success using Vignette(R) Content Management solutions, which have helped drive a 242 percent increase in traffic to Ball State sites. In addition, Ball State's Office of Information Technology has completed initial implementations of Vignette Dialog and plans to pilot other products, including Vignette Application Portal and Vignette Builder.

Since its initial deployment of Vignette, Ball State has gone from 10 Vignette-powered department initiatives to more than 122 today, with more being added every week. The amount of Web content managed by Vignette has increased exponentially to more than 34,000 pages, all of which utilize the same branding and navigation. The expanded use of Vignette to power Ball State and affiliated sites is a testament to the benefits of leveraging a scalable and flexible content management solution that allows the university to present a unified brand through its Web presence.

Ball State also is offering continual improvements to the university's Web site, including personalization, enhanced search across a variety of information repositories and integration of course catalogs to help ensure content is accurate and up to date at the department level. "We are really interested in looking at efficiencies and enhancements for our Web enterprise environment," said Philip Repp, associate vice president of Information Technology at Ball State University.

Ball State's rollout of Vignette Dialog, which provides communications and campaign management features, initially focused on student recruitment but is quickly expanding to encompass other communications initiatives, including communication with alumni, donors and internal audiences. The pilots of Vignette Application Portal and Vignette Builder will explore creation of self-service Web sites for a variety of audiences. These systems should help Ball State reduce costs and increase efficiency by making commonly accessed forms and applications available online.

"Vignette Content Management solutions have enabled us to more fully leverage the Web as an effective marketing tool. Vignette's status as a visionary allows us to project the university in that same light, and that's exciting to us because that's how we want to be perceived," said Al Rent, director of university marketing at Ball State University. "By expanding our relationship with Vignette, we are able to move closer to our vision of an integrated and customer-centered Web and marketing strategy. Vignette has been an important partner in enabling us to fulfill this vision, thanks to the company's depth and breadth of technology expertise."

"Vignette continues to provide Ball State with additional tools that have become key components within our application development toolbox," said Brad Hostetler, coordinator of distributed systems in Ball State's University Computing Services. "We have started to integrate Vignette Dialog into our system solutions and are very impressed. In the past, we would have written applications to accomplish what Vignette Dialog already gives us. And we're able to spend less time in the design and implementation of the Vignette Dialog solutions compared with what would have been required for us to develop the solution ourselves."

"Ball State University's impressive vision for strategic use of technology solidifies its position as a leading and forward-thinking institution," said Patti Jones, senior vice president of worldwide sales and distribution at Vignette. "Vignette is excited about expanding its partnership with Ball State and leveraging the company's expertise in the higher-education vertical to help this customer meet and exceed expectations."

30.07.2004, Vignette Corp.