Microsoft Office 2010Customer Solution Case Study

University Improves Education and Administration Processes with Productivity Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: AustriaIndustry: Education

Customer ProfileHeadquartered in Krems, Austria, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems has an international focus and business, health, and life sciences programs for its 2,000 students.

Business SituationIMC wanted to improve the student experience through efficient processes for educational and administrative activities.

SolutionIMC developed course workspaces using Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. It also developed paperless solutions for admissions and tuition payment.

Benefits Better prepared students Reduced IT costs Improve productivity and

transparency

"By using Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, students are learning real-life problem solving skills and the technology skills that they will use in their jobs after graduation."

Michael Reiner, Professor, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems

Based in Krems, Austria, IMC University of Applied Sciences has 2,000 students enrolled in programs for business, health, and life sciences. IMC has designed its infrastructure and practices to prepare students for employment by combining academics with practical experience and an international focus. IMC deployed Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to support more efficient course workspaces and paperless processes for admissions, tuition payment, and other administrative activities. Professors can organize course content more efficiently, and students can access content even without an Internet connection. The university has found the Microsoft 2010 productivity solution has helped better prepare students for employment, reduced IT costs, and improved productivity as well as transparency within the entire organization.

SituationFounded in 1994, IMC University of Applied Sciences is an internationally renowned university based in Krems, Austria. Its 2,000 students are enrolled in programs for business, health, and life sciences. Students at IMC are required to finish six months of practical work experience or internships that provide them hand-on experience in their field of study. By offering students a combination of practical experience, a strong academic curriculum, an international focus, and experience with the latest technology, IMC prepares students to become valuable workers upon graduation.

The university IT department supports 800 computers for 140 full-time employees, guest lecturers, classrooms, and computer labs. Markus Bamberger, Head of IT at IMC, says, “Because we are relatively new, we have built a university without some of the historical bad habits that may impede other institutions. We were able to establish new infrastructure and practices from the ground up.”

In 2007, IMC wanted to establish an environment where tasks, processes, and workflows worked together, and it deployed Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Bamberger says, “This environment provided a good platform for our administrative and student processes,

but people found it difficult and time-consuming to change between the different menu and Ribbon user interfaces across the applications.” The differences in the user interface across applications caused an increase in help desk calls.

With Office SharePoint Server 2007, professors stored course content such as syllabuses, tutorials, articles, and videos in document libraries shared with students. IT set up sites for professors, and they were helpful for sharing course information. As the university grew to over 2,000 courses, it required a solution in which professors could more easily create, edit, and set permissions to their own course sites without IT involvement.

IMC deployed paperless solutions based on Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for travel expenses, vacation approvals, and classroom availability. These solutions effectively reduced paper and printing costs and reduced the process time. However, IT staff was required to write Microsoft ASP.NET code in Microsoft Visual Studio to host the InfoPath forms on webpages, which took several hours.

In addition, IMC wanted a solution that could help it streamline other administrative processes. To bill students for tuition, accounting would manually fill information on each student, print a

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letter, and mail it. By the time they received the check and applied the payment, an average of six weeks would have passed. The admissions department also wanted to improve how it gathered evaluations for prospective students.

SolutionIn August 2010, IMC upgraded to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to help improve the way its employees, professors, and students interact with each other. The university installed Office 2010 on its 800 computers and made SharePoint Server 2010 available to its 140 full-time employees and 2,000 students.

With Office 2010, the university is able to take advantage of its previous deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The university provides access to email, calendar, tasks, and contacts to all employees and students with Exchange 2010. With Office Communications Server 2007 R2, university employees use presence indicators that display availability throughout the Office 2010 suite and can initiate instant messaging sessions to communicate quickly with colleagues. IMC plans to upgrade to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 in 2011 to deliver a more comprehensive communication solution.

To automate its deployment of Office 2010, the university used the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit combined with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, a product designed to simplify IT management. IMC also used the Office Customization Tool to personalize the user settings. Bamberger says, “Fortunately, Office 2010 was easy to deploy and IT did not require any training for deployment. The German language pack for Office 2010 was released in July, but we had Office 2010 installed before our semester began on September 1.” IMC estimates it spent only 120 hours on the Office 2010 deployment.

The university built an enhanced solution for professors and students to share course information and content and provide greater transparency. For example the course syllabus can be posted by the professor, approved by the department head, and reviewed by students. Bamberger says, “IT developed a simple script professors can use to click a link that establishes the course site and provides access to the students who are enrolled in the course.” Professors can now easily edit their course pages and set permissions without IT involvement because of improvements in SharePoint Server 2010 such as tabs, a contextual text editor, and groups in the Ribbon,

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“IT developed a simple script professors can use to click a link that establishes the course site and provides access to the students who are enrolled in the course.”

Markus Bamberger, Head of IT, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems

which is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent interface.

With the new solution, students are learning new skills and also how to apply technology to solve problems. Michael Reiner, Professor at IMC, says, “In my Modern Communications course, students are using SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010 to set up their own sites, blogs, and wikis to communicate within their teams. They can write and publish blog posts directly from Word 2010.” With automated synchronization between SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010, professors and students can edit course documents and lists without an Internet connection when working remotely. When they reconnect, only their changes are uploaded.

The university’s accounting department has simplified its process for collecting tuition with SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010. Through the Microsoft Outlook 2010 messaging and collaboration client, the accounting team can automatically generate email messages with student information that includes the tuition amount and transaction number. After the student pays the bill through online banking, the university uploads the bank file and SharePoint Server 2010 automatically matches the student record with the transaction number. Students can then

download a payment confirmation from the SharePoint site.

The admissions office has improved the way it collects evaluations for prospective students. Using the new InfoPath Form Web Part in SharePoint Server 2010, IMC can add the prospective student information form to its web page without any code. Prospective students complete their application form online, and the information is populated in SharePoint. Admissions officers can then automatically generate a Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet from SharePoint with the applicant’s name, test scores, and education history. While interviewing the applicant, the admissions officer uses the Excel Web App to enter evaluation scores on criteria such as communication skills and problem-solving capability. The evaluation scores are automatically uploaded and stored in SharePoint so that the admissions team can more easily evaluate applicant information including interview results.

IMC is taking advantage of other improvements in Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. Employees find it easier to work with different applications now that the user interface is consistent across all Office 2010 applications and SharePoint Server 2010.

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With Quick Steps in Outlook 2010, employees can perform multi-command tasks, such as Reply and Move to a specific folder, with a single click from the Outlook 2010 Ribbon toolbar. From the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, employees can easily manage files with commands such as Save to SharePoint, Publish as a Blog Post, or Save as PDF.

Employees and students also use the Outlook Social Connector to view networking information from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and SharePoint Server 2010. Holger Hladik, a business student says, “The university experience is not just about getting work done, but also about networking. The integration of social media platforms like Xing is very useful to enlarge one’s personal network. Additionally, the integration of Facebook is very useful to see what events are taking place on campus and which colleagues are joining them.“

BenefitsWith its deployment of Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, IMC has improved the educational experience for students and simplified administrative activities. The university has better prepared students, reduced IT costs, and improved productivity and transparency.

Better Prepared StudentsOne of the goals of the university is to ease the students’ transition from

university to the workforce. Professor Reiner says, “When students are creating team sites, blogs, and wikis, they have to think about what and how to communicate—the level of detail, its priority, and how it is delivered. By using Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, students are learning real-life problem-solving skills and the technology skills that they will use in their jobs after graduation.” Students are also getting hands-on experience with the latest technology.

Because of their practical experience, academic knowledge, and technology skills, IMC students can easily transition to becoming valuable employees upon graduation. Bamberger says, “Recruiters tell us, ‘Your students know how knowledge workers should use the latest technologies.’ Our students and their parents are pleased that potential employers recognize this as an advantage.”

Hladik says, “I know colleagues from other universities who are quite envious of the possibilities we are having because of SharePoint. Our solution helps me get used to working in a structured way while offering me the freedom to try different solutions to assigned tasks.”

Reduced IT CostsIMC estimates that it took 70 percent less time for its upgrade to Office 2010

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"Recruiters tell us, ‘Your students know how knowledge workers should use the latest technologies.’ Our students and their parents are pleased that potential employers recognize this as an advantage.”

Markus Bamberger, Head of IT, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems

than for its previous upgrade to Office 2007. This represents a cost reduction of €5,000 (U.S.$6,600). With the consistent user interface across all Office 2010 applications and SharePoint Server 2010, help desk calls and costs have declined. IMC has saved €15,000 (U.S.$19,800) on third-party licenses with the ability to save documents as PDFs directly from the Backstage view of some Office 2010 applications.

Because of the easy-to-use interface and web editing improvements in SharePoint Server 2010, most professors no longer have to depend on IT staff to edit their course pages. Bamberger says, “We find it easy to edit with SharePoint Server 2010 and similar to editing content in Word 2010. IT staff no longer has to spend two to three hours setting up course sites.” IT leadership estimates saving €9,000 (U.S.$11,900) each year by reducing the time it spends setting up sites for professors. IT staff has also reduced the amount of development time required to add forms to webpages.

Improved Productivity and Transparency With the consistent Ribbon user interface across applications, employees spend less time searching for features. Employees have reduced the number of actions to perform tasks with new features such as Quick Steps and the Backstage view. Bamberger says, “With

the new tuition payment process based on SharePoint Server 2010, we reduced the cycle time from six weeks to one week, an 83 percent improvement.” IMC continues to expand its paperless-forms-based solution to more processes to help it save time printing and handing off papers between multiple people.

IMC employees are able to stay productive with an improved ability to work from anywhere. With SharePoint Workspace 2010, professors and students can access and edit course documents stored in SharePoint Server 2010 without an Internet connection. Professors can access students’ papers saved to SharePoint when they are on a train and working offline. Admissions officers can access candidates’ evaluation spreadsheets through the Microsoft Excel Web App on any computer with an Internet connection.

The university has improved transparency in its processes and decisions with the new solution. Bamberger says, “The Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 solution helps us know who is doing what. Our students and professors are clear on responsibilities. Even our department heads and Board of Directors can get into the detail of course content or administrative decisions if they need to.”

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“We find it easy to edit with SharePoint Server 2010 and similar to editing content in Word 2010. IT staff no longer has to spend two to three hours setting up course sites.”

Markus Bamberger, Head of IT, IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems

IMC is using Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 to support its continued growth and focus on preparing students for their careers. Bamberger says, “Our professors and employees have more time to focus on academics and our students. We are not spending time pushing paper around, and our solutions are fully integrated into our employees’ daily activities. This is helping us grow as a leading university.”Microsoft Office 2010Microsoft Office 2010 gives your people powerful, timesaving tools to do their best work from more places. With new capabilities and insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, Office 2010 offers the complete package—with familiar, intuitive tools. Now you can express ideas, solve problems, connect with people, and create amazing results—in the office, at home, or on the go.

For more information about Microsoft Office, go to:www.office.com

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems call 43 2732-802-140 or visit the website at: www.fh-krems.ac.at

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Software and Services Microsoft Office− Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010− Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2− Microsoft Office Web Apps

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio−Microsoft Exchange Server 2010−Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010−Microsoft System Center Operations

Manager 2007 R2