Solent University - Case Study

A brand new image for a brand new university

Southampton Solent University is one of the UK's newest universities, but its vocational and professional strength is rooted deep within its 150 year history. It became a university in July 2005 and adopted its current name on 15th August.

Dr. Keith Johnson, Vice Principal (External Development) summed up the importance of this change of status in the following words:

"Southampton Institute's award of university status opens up a whole new chapter in its development and offers the opportunity for the institution to build upon its recognised strengths as a key strategic actor in the region's future economic development and growth."

Limiting risk

One of the key challenges facing the Solent team was the fast track implementation of their website to reflect and reinforce their new branding. Timescales were short; the whole project had to be delivered within 2 months if key objectives were going to be met.

Contensis R4 was chosen as the content management solution for its proven ease of use and deep out of the box functionality. Solent liked the partnership approach proposed by our professional services team and the availability of a large number of pre-built components which significantly reduce project build times.

Sharing the workload - delivering the solution in partnership

At the start the Solent team had their hands full with branding and content issues, so our professional services team took on the site architecture and template creation tasks to give the project a really good kick start.

Learning on the job!

It soon became clear that there would be little time to carry out any formal training, at least at the early stages. The Solent team decided to learn on the job, and with the help of our implementation team at appropriate moments, they created most of their content before attending any classroom training sessions!

The project was delivered on time and has created quite a stir, having many interactive features, including a series of video campus tours. Now that it’s easy to update, the content is always fresh and relevant, providing an enhanced user experience.