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August 22nd, 2006: Interwoven is working with the University of Sydney to provide delivery of high quality, brand consistent, and targeted content across more than 130 university websites and key print materials such as student and faculty handbooks.

The University of Sydney currently operates 17 faculties and eight teaching campuses throughout Australia with over 46,000 students and approximately 6,000 staff members.

As the university expanded over the years, so did its communication channels with students, staff, and other key audiences, resulting in over 600 websites, representing different faculties, departments and research centres. Previously, these Web properties were managed independently of each other and did not adhere to any formal branding or content publishing standards. The end result was a disconnected network of websites often containing duplicated, out-of-date, and inaccurate information, with no consistency in brand, messaging, or presentation. The university also lacked a method to easily and quickly publish essential materials such as faculty handbooks via both the Web and print.

To address this challenge, the university selected Interwoven to automate and streamline their publishing process, empowering individual departments, research centres, and institutes to directly publish local and highly-targeted Web content, while still maintaining control over the university's brand and a consistent look and feel. It also chose Interwoven to publish electronic and print versions of its faculty handbooks and to deliver and maintain personalised student portals in conjunction with directory services and portal technology from Interwoven partner Sun Microsystems.

Since implementing the Interwoven solution, the university has successfully created over 130 websites. All support a consistent look and feel while also providing students and staff with relevant and personalised information relating to their campus or department. Interwoven empowers content creators throughout the university to directly contribute to their sites, leveraging Interwoven to maintain consistency in brand, messaging, and content presentation across the university's numerous Web properties.

"Students have a number of choices when deciding where to obtain their education, and as a leading organisation in a competitive market, the University of Sydney is committed to providing our students with the best possible experience," said Charlie Forsyth, head of Web Services at the University of Sydney. "Interwoven has enabled us to successfully unify and communicate our brand across our diverse web presences, and has helped to ensure our markets and students receive the most current and accurate information via any of our web channels and print."

Interwoven enabled the university to create handbook templates that its campuses easily populate with local course listings and regulations, thereby speeding the creation process, while also ensuring brand and presentation consistency. Once the handbooks have been created, they are easily published to the web and also viewed in Adobe PDF format, as well as published in print through on-demand print publishing capabilities.

As a result of improved efficiencies and their new multi-channel content publishing capabilities, the university has realised an increase in student satisfaction across campuses. Recently, 79 per cent of students gave the university's main website high marks for ease-of-use-a statistic that is further validated by the more than one-and-a-half million visits the site receives each month.

"The Interwoven solution has given our staff a level of control and professionalism in presentation that was not available previously," said Marian Theobald, Director of Community Engagement at the University of Sydney. "This is reflected in the enthusiastic take-up of the system. People adopt new technology if they see it will make their lives easier."

"The education industry is growing increasingly competitive. Educational institutions must be able to deliver an optimal experience to students, staff, and all other key audiences in order to stay competitive and continue to attract top students and faculty," said Chris Lynch, Managing Director A/NZ at Interwoven "Through its adoption of innovative technologies, the University of Sydney is clearly setting an example for others in the industry, and we're thrilled to partner with them as they continue to strengthen their relationship with existing students and surrounding communities, as well as further increase their appeal to prospective students."

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