During Autumn of 2006, St Martin’s College, Lancaster, embarked upon a merger with Cumbria Institute of Arts (CIA) and the Cumbria campuses of UCLAN to form the new University of Cumbria.

The new University has multiple campuses, with a headquarters in Carlisle.

The organisation required a new web presence in the form of an outward facing website.

This website needed to provide a variety of functions:

To be an outward facing tool to ensure their target markets and stakeholders were aware of their brand and the specific services that they offered so as to generate students, partners and advocates

To provide support and complement existing and future customer-centric recruitment services designed to turn enquiries into students entering onto courses relevant to their needs and aspirations

To provide a staff intranet/private areas

To provide an infrastructure to facilitate clear and consistent communication with and across the institution

They required a system which has the ability to interact and share information with other institutional systems now and disseminate a corporate brand across associated systems.

The required system had to be flexible, scalable and have the capacity to grow with the institution without the need for additional developmental costs.

They envisaged a web site which would, via a future portal, be able to seamlessly interact with other college systems including student information systems (SITS), human resources, ICT systems, databases and distributed virtual learning environments.

During November 2006 Contensis was chosen after a rigorous selection process and through its flexible, high (out of the Box) functionality was able to produce the functions that the University required in a short time period.

‘’Why did we select Contensis? Flexibility of the system. If we want to change something we can. We don’t have to ask you (and pay you) to do it. “Out of the box“ functionality level was high and add-ons reasonably priced. We felt that our business would be important to you. With some competitors we felt that we were too small a customer to be valued. We thought we could work with you which is really important’’.

Marie Kane - SMART Future Project Manager