IDP Education Australia (IDP) wanted a website that was both user friendly and functional. It also had a lot of content that needed to be available and refreshed. The team found it very difficult to find any information of use because it was buried too deep or in obscure places.

While Macromedia's Dreamweaver gave IDP the capabilities to create the website they wanted, it assumed that each person that added to the website would know how to use it. IDP wanted to make it easy for specialists to update the site without having to learn a web tool and without fear of breaking the site's design.

Challenge

The aim of the new website was to create a central repository for all faces of IDP and ensure that each target audience was able to find the information its constituents needed. IDP also wanted to create a repository for the publications created and published to both print and web.

Solution

After researching the state of the content management system market, IDP found there were several solutions providers at the six and seven figure level. Their budget was more confined and they issued a restricted tender to four promising industry tested players of which one opted out, one offered a custom-build solution and one offered a product in early development which failed to meet IDP's needs. As a result of this rigorous process, IDP chose itechne edDesk as its content management and publishing system.

Results

After IDP had completed analysis and planning, itechne's Professional Services division was asked to advise on final structure and functionality. Implementation of the site consisted of IDP submitting content into edDesk and itechne providing scripts and back-end development to ensure desired functionality.

To incorporate the roll out of IDP's new brand, planning and implementation was required in four to six months. To achieve this, many infrastructural decisions made by both IDP and itechne had to accommodate a short timeline. According to IDP, the resulting website and content management system proved more than satisfactory. "itechne were not only helpful in the decision-making process, but also very responsive in fulfilling requests," says John Hilvert, the project lead at IDP.

IDP has leveraged edDesk to improve the current infrastructure of the website and ensure an effective rollout to the rest of the IDP Global Network. itechne has assisted in this process by overseeing the analysis to ensure that once the infrastructure is completely finalised there will be no need to change it again while having the flexibility to add components and change any existing components.

“Only itechne had an industry proven product, edDesk, that could support distributed authoring, repurposing of content and fair pricing. It also had a track record of good partnering and support that met our needs”

John Hilvert, IDP Education Australia

Benefits for IDP

- stakeholders in the website able to update information without knowledge of HTML. Updates achieved via Word-like interface

- over 60 overseas offices able to update country-specific information in a timely and efficient manner, including multilingual updates

- overseas offices able to brand country sites (within corporate branding criteria) to attract students

- efficient workflows and approval mechanisms allow corporate control of content on site

- content published in print media is now seamlessly integrated within the website without 'double-handling' or 'cut and paste'

- edDesk will now be used to manage content on intranet and other web sites

Benefits for Readers

- content constantly updated so that it is fresh and up-to-date

- where applicable, overseas students can read the site in English or their native language

- comprehensive search functionality

Summary

Organisation's industry: Education / Public Sector

Type of deployment: Web publishing, content management for both print and web, ongoing consultancy