RSVP for upcoming vendor demos

We are scheduling vendor demos for the following times:

• Tuesday, March 9, 12:30pm - 2:30pm
• Tuesday, March 9, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
• Thursday, March 11, 10:00am – 12:00pm
• Thursday, March 11, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

Demos are open to all members of the CI community, but space is limited, so you must RSVP to attend. Location information will be provided via email to those that RSVP.

CLICK HERE to RSVP for the vendor demos now!

Vendor demo update

The next phase of the WCM evaluation process will include demonstrations by vendors. The 2-hour demos will help the University key system features. While the demonstrations are largely structured (in order to enable a method for comparison of features across products), each vendor will have an opportunity to showcase the unique strengths of their product.

Each vendor will receive the vendor demonstration agenda and a set of sample files to be used in the demonstration.

Vendors who are participating in the RFP are being contacted to obtain preferences for demo scheduling; however, participation in the demos will be determined by the University based on the RFP evaluation criteria. The demos will be scheduled for the week of March 8-12.

Project status update; RFP

The WCM Core Group met on January 7 to discuss the outcomes of the Phase 1 evaluation. 20 web content management products were evaluated according to the criteria.

There were 76 initial criteria; some criteria were eliminated during the evaluation process.
Each criteria was assigned a “Relative Importance” value (1-5, 5=highest importance) that was reviewed and approved by the Core WCM team.

In order to further narrow the field of candidates, the Core Group decided that comprehensive pricing and service information should be obtained by RFI or RFP prior to proceeding to the vendor demo phase. An RFP was created, and on February 3, 2010, five vendors were invited to respond to the RFP (in no particular order):

• Hannon Hill Corporation
• OmniUpdate
• PaperThin
• Percussion
• TerminalFour

Yesterday an optional virtual conference was held by University IT and Procurement staff for the offerors to answer any questions regarding the RFP. Notes from that conference will be appended to the RFP and distributed via email next week.

The deadline for the RFP response is March 1, 2010. We're looking forward to seeing the vendor proposals.

Phase 1 almost complete; about Phase 2

The product evaluations for Phase 1 are almost complete. The Core Team will meet again in early January to review and discuss the initial results and to select the vendors & products which will proceed to Phase 2.

In Phase 2, products which meet the Phase 1 criteria will be invited to present a demonstration of their product to the Core and Advisory group members.

A detailed demonstration agenda will be provided to vendors in advance, and CI participants will use a set of critera evaluate the vendor products. Each session will include a question and answer session.

Vendors who participate in Phase 2 will likely provide demonstrations via WebEx or similar technologies, though the Core Group can choose to have them come to campus to present their product demonstration.

Phase I Status

Phase I of the WCM Evaluation project is nearing completion.

The survey analysis is complete, and ~75% of the requirements comparison has been completed.

One challenge has been evaluating products that are open source. In many cases, you can't just contact a vendor to have your questions answered. Instead, you have to dig through documentation, demos, and user forums to get the answers. On a positive note, most of the time installing the software yourself (if you have the right server infrastructure available) is pretty trivial, so that has worked out as another easy approach to completing our evaluations.

Once the requirements evaluation for Phase I is completed, the Core group will meet to review the results and select a subset of products to participate in Phase II of the process: structured demos by the vendor for the Core Group and possibly Advisory Group members.

WCM Survey analysis complete

This morning, the results of the Web Content Management (WCM) survey were sent to the Core Group for review. There were 136 total responses from the community.

There weren't many surprises revealed by the survey; it helped to clarify and confirm many existing perceptions. The results will be especially useful in the future, as we now have a benchmark for the level of satisfaction with our current WCM system.

Here are some things we observed in the results:

Many of our web content creators don’t have a lot of prior experience working on web sites. Less than 50% of respondents who are currently using the system had ever worked on a Web site before.

People with less web experience seem to like the WCM more. Collage users who have beginner-level web skills or who had never worked on a web site prior to Collage are 17-39% more satisfied with Collage than people that have prior experience working on web sites.

Our WCM users probably don't have sufficient modern web design skills. While 70% of respondents claim that they have at least a beginner’s understanding of the principles and practices of modern web design, and 80% consider themselves "intermediate" or "advanced" for most Windows + MS Word skills, the results suggest that only 20% likely possess the skills to successfully perform modern Web design tasks.

Overall satisfaction with the system is largely neutral,with the remainder closely split with a slight edge to satisfied users.

Most respondents consider our current WCM easy to use, and like the consistency it creates. Most positive comments about Collage’s strengths were about ease of use and consistency.

Respondents remarked on these weaknesses of our current WCM (in order of importance):

1. Editing and publishing speed. Collage is not fast enough.
2. Insufficient formatting controls. People want to do more with fonts color, styles, and layout.
3. Browser compatibility. Needs to work well and consistently across browsers & platforms.
4. Clunky administrative interface. It should be more streamlined and focused on only the tasks a user needs.
5. The built-in editing tool. Should provide better/more editing control.

Most people that use the WCM understand how to it. Most feel that they have received sufficient training to use Collage effectively on a day-to-day basis.

More detailed analysis has been provided to the Core Group for further review.

Survey status

We're received 91 replies to date; thank you to those CI employees that have participated in the WCM survey thus far. For those that haven't, the survey will be open through the end of October. We appreciate all feedback; we want to make sure that we're selecting a system that best fits the needs of the University community, and we can only do that if people tell us what they need, what works and what doesn't.

The review of products Phase 1 of the evaluation and selection process will begin soon.