Easing the paper chase

Two institutions of higher learning have deployed an enterprise content management system from RedDot Solutions to increase application submissions.

McDaniel College in Maryland and Rider University in New Jersey have chosen the solution to streamline the content published on their Web sites. With the new system, they can reduce the amount of time needed to publish content online; gain more control of their brands; and provide administrative staff and faculty with the ability to add, edit and manage content easily, RedDot reports in a recent news release.

Rider—with 5,500 graduate and undergraduate students--wanted to increase the number of applications submitted through its Web site. Three months after installing the system, the university had achieved the following results:

• five percent increase in the number of inquiries from the new Web site;
• eight percent increase in the number of student applications submitted through the site; and
• • faster, more productive workflow granting authenticated access to authors and staff.

  "In order to reach the goals set for the redesigned Web site, it is imperative that faculty and university staff are able to make changes to their content without having to go through significant training," says Tara Laposa, director of Internet projects at Rider. "RedDot CMS allows for this, giving our students, faculty and staff a greater sense of ownership to their content."

  McDaniel College, with 3,300 graduate and undergraduate students, will use the solution to create a more timely and interactive Web site. The new site will allow for large groups of people to regularly access and publish content on it and use it as a communal forum of information, RedDot says.

  "We needed a better way to manage our site—one that would centralize our content and allow for more faculty and administrators to publish to it," says Joyce Muller, associate VP of communications and marketing for McDaniel.