Description:
Ellucian (a new company formed in 2012 with the combination of Datatel and SunGard Higher Education) selected Enterprise Hive social business software in 2010 to implement its new customer and user group community called the Commons. Operating as a private, secure community within the edu1world.org higher education online community, Ellucian fully deployed its new customer community in less than 12 weeks. The Commons was developed to allow Ellucian customers, partners and employees to collaborate, learn from each other and build an informed, knowledgeable network around Ellucian’s products and services. The Commons’ members use Enterprise Hive’s comprehensive set of social business features to help build their company community, including blogs, wikis, content management, search and personal profiles and a robust library of information about Ellucian’s products and services suite.
Challenge:
Ellucian, formerly SunGard Higher Education, serves colleges, universities and foundations in 40 countries worldwide. Through its Open Digital Campus strategy, Ellucian collaborates with the higher education community and provides software and services to help institutions find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect.
The Commons was developed as an online community to help open discussion and collaboration by connecting customers and employees around the world. They were looking for a way to connect customers and employees to share expertise, ideas, challenges and best practices that help improve higher education. Ellucian felt it was also important to extend its interaction with the greater higher education community.
Action:
edu1world provided a proven higher education-specific platform that aligned well with our Open Digital Campus vision and delivered an established community of knowledge to the Commons. Sub-communities oriented around Ellucian solutions, geographic regions, and common interests help people connect on a wide range of topics. In addition, the Ellucian private community members benefit from the wealth of knowledge from the extended edu1world community, which includes thousands of professionals outside the Ellucian community.
Result:
The Commons has significantly increased access to a larger Ellucian user community and enables deeper interaction. The benefits of participating in the Ellucian Commons include accessing a large, relevant user community; connecting with colleagues around the world who share similar needs and interests; opening more transparent dialogue; sharing of best practices, tips, tricks and product enhancements; broadening the opportunity to contribute ideas, suggestions and requirements for future solutions; easing access to Ellucian’s Community Source Initiative and opening access to the varied higher education communities within edu1world.
