Business Intelligence

It's all very well and good to talk about the need to do more with less—as if this necessity has escaped anyone's attention these days. But how exactly do you achieve this objective in an efficient, rational (and humane) manner? Increasingly, one way organizations are streamlining and gaining efficiencies is through integrating siloed IT systems, eliminating the time-consuming practice of jumping between multiple applications. And when it comes to integration, using enterprise content management (ECM) as integrative middleware offers profound advantages.

John Hermes, vice president of information technology for Oklahoma Christian University, knew the school had problems. Despite a reputation as a pioneer in education technology and as a very high-tech university, Oklahoma Christian (OC) was lagging further and further behind in its business processes, says Hermes.

On any university or college campus, information is held in numerous content-related, department-specific applications. For example, HR likely has its own system that allows staff to easily access information through a primary portal; accounting may be set up the same way. And so it goes throughout the campus, with departments utilizing their own systems to conduct business. That would be fine if all the information required to get the job done was confined within that particular application, but that's hardly the case.