Yesterday, at the Gateway to Innovation conference in Saint Louis, MO, two of our clients presented to an audience on how SharePoint specifically helped their organizations 1) grow and scale, and 2) collaborate and integrate data and processes.

Aaron Schmeerbauch of Cassidy Turley speaks at Gateway to Innovation 2012

Andrew Richards, Director of the Information Systems Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University presented a new external website developed on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with the help of Perficient. Aaron Schmeerbauch, a project manager at Cassidy Turley, presented a SharePoint implementation designed to assist with internal collaboration as the firm grew. Here are the key points and highlights from their presentations, along with screenshots of the work performed with Perficient’s assistance and strategic guidance.

A New website for Washington University Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences

Richards began by addressing the needs he had identified with the old site. “We needed to connect worldwide with a good user experience for applicants.” The challenge: Applicants and alumni are scattered across the world.

Key Drivers/Challenges:

• Site design and impression
• Content organization and navigation
• Site performance and site maintenance
• University wide migration from Lotus Notes
• Social media
• Needed a Mobile-friendly piece

Additional Challenges:

• Until the redesign, the website had primarily focused on the applicants but not other users. This new site also needed to properly serve content up easily to faculty, students and alumni for their needs as well.
• Users complained about difficulty finding content, so a user experience review was imperative.
• Quick links on left hand side were limited in number so they had to be generic in description. If someone came on the site looking for something specific, the couldn’t find it.
• Not a good system for content management for the staff. Would have needed to go back to the provider to get the site expanded.

Perficient Came in to Engage:

• UX practice at Perficient was leveraged to study the site and weigh in on the proposed redesign.
• The team produced three different site layouts for the department to review and choose from.
• Perficient wanted to put Wash U in a better light by focusing on the high quality of education at lower cost

The new site for Washington Univeristy's Division of Biology: http://dbbs.wustl.edu

What Perficient Did:

• Refined user interface and information architecture
• Enhanced CMS with SharePoint 2010
• Expanded integration options with existing systems
• Integrated single identity for authentication across Wash U
• Provided out of the box mobile access