European University College Brussels

Various Smartsite customers are using Smartsite as a web application platform to build their own websites and intranets. One of them is the European University College based in Brussels. Jan van Calster is head of the IT department at European University College and closely involved in all initiatives regarding internet and intranet within his organization. An interview with Jan van Calster sets out why the University College has not only chosen Smartsite to manage the web content but decided also to do their own technical website development.

As in many other organizations, the selection of a Content Management System was necessary for the European University College to solve the so-called ‘web master bottleneck’. Every time somebody from the Communications department wanted to add new content to the website this person needed to send it to somebody in the IT department before it could be published on the website. “Most of the time this IT specialist was busy uploading all the web content instead of doing the things he’s really good at, such as developing and maintaining software applications”, Jan van Calster explains. “Buying a Content Management System such as Smartsite, which is fully role based and easy-to-use for non-technical editors, solves this problem and responsibilities throughout the organization fall in place.”

Make-or-buy decision

Another decision to be made was about who would do the implementation and all further developments regarding the system. Jan van Calster explains: “Typical for our IT department is that we like to have control over new developments and we want to be sure that we can have enough influence ourselves on end results. Furthermore we like to operate in a flexible way not being tied up in complex project approaches and long decision procedures.” These are the main reasons why the European University College often chooses to use their own development resources when there is a ‘make-or-buy’ decision to be made.

As optimizing the college website and intranet would be an ongoing process the decision was made to choose for self-service. “At the moment a dynamic project team consisting of a graphical designer, a web developer, a communications specialist and a quality expert is responsible for building the new intranet without support from an external party (except for the necessary training and some technical support from Smartsite and her partner UCAD of course).”

Support of open industry standards

Smartsite fits really well in this self-service strategy thanks to its support of open industry standards like XML, XSLT, SOAP/ Webservices, W3C, WEBDAV, Web 2.0, etc. “It’s also in favour of Smartsite that our developers are very familiar with Microsoft technology; recently it has become internal policy that all new development must be .NET based”, according to Jan van Calster. Van Calster and his IT colleagues also like the flexible channel principle which enables them to add separate Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to different so-called channels. This concept perfectly suits their multi site environment.

Besides meeting all the technical requirements Smartsite provides many features filling in the functional needs of the European University College. “For example a form of Document Management is possible which is required to publish all kinds of physical documents, like agendas and reports on the intranet. Also the workflow and versioning facility was important to us as our ISO 9000 quality handbook is created in Word decentrally but needs to be presented in html in a proper way, first checked centrally by a quality controller. Thanks to the use of metadata the various chapters of the handbook will be presented on the intranet only in relevant sections to the right people.”

Another reason to opt for Smartsite was related to pricing. Jan van Calster explains: “The Smartsite pricing model is very attractive since it includes an unlimited number of editors’ licenses. Other products often maintain a price-per-user model which would have become very expensive as we have planned to make all our 450 employees an editor of the intranet in the near future.”

The website is now being converted to Smartsite and the intranet will become more and more a central portal for the employees to all information and applications they need in doing their daily work. Jan van Calster concludes: “The enthusiasm within our project team grows and grows. The more we work with Smartsite the more possibilities arise which brings us new ideas. This suits our vision to see the optimalization of our websites and intranets as an ongoing process!”

European University College Brussels

European University College Brussels is one of the leading institutes of higher education in Europe. The University College stands for topnotch business oriented education in Brussels, the economic and political heart of the European Union. A wide spectrum of degree programmes is offered in various domains: commercial sciences, management, health care, social work and education. Following the 2002 merger, the total student population adds up to about 5000 in the regular degree programmes and over 7000 in the advanced and continuing training programmes.