The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts
The Liverpool Insititute for Performing Arts (LIPA) has improved communication and reduced administration costs by using Interact.
The Organisation
LIPA opened in 1996 and aims to provide distinctive, excellent and entrepreneurial learning programmes, delivery mechanisms, materials and resources for arts and entertainment activities. It is dedicated to people who want to enter – and survive - the tough world of arts and entertainment, whether as performers or those who make performance possible. LIPA offers a range of unique courses and is a cultural centre with world class facilities.
| "Interact was delivered on time and at a very competitive price. It is a major improvement over our previous system and is now the accepted medium for information dissemination" |
| Ken O’Donoghue, Director of Information Service & Technical Support, LIPA |
The Challenge
LIPA’s previous Intranet was an open source system, which had a number of issues associated with it namely:
- It required a heavy investment in time to configure, test and implement the system
- The deployed solution was restricted to ‘one look’ which was perceived to be out of date by users
- Changes were difficult and time consuming to achieve. Users could not make their own changes – they had to be made by an Administrator, which created a bottleneck and put pressure on key personnel. For example, minor changes to a module handbook download had to be hard-coded and could take 10-15 minutes each to execute
- LIPA used version 6.0 of the system which was superseded by several newer versions and an upgrade would effectively mean starting again from scratch;
- It was not DDA compliant
For the last nine years, LIPA staff have used a simple shared folder on the LIPA network to store and share documents. Gradually, the contents of this shared folder grew and it became unsuitable for the following reasons:
- There was no means of document version control and there were often several versions of the same document in the shared folder.
- Staff tended not to delete files once they were no longer current. This led to a substantial increase in the shared folder file size (as much as 42Gb)
- Document security became an important issue. Unless document security was specifically requested from the ICT Department any staff member could read all files in the shared folder.
- Finding a specific document or file in the shared folder was very time consuming as there was no search provision.
The Objective
LIPA required a new look Intranet for use by their 150 staff and over 500 student members. They wanted to enhance communication between students and reduce administration costs, particularly the amount of time spent by the Web Manager posting documents and news items.
One of the main drivers for LIPA was an effective document management system which would enable ease of retrieving, sharing, tracking, revising, and distributing documents and the information they contain. They wanted to manage documents through their lifecycle, from inception through creation, review, storage and dissemination all the way to their destruction.
A content management system which would offer better service to LIPA stakeholders by empowering them to take more responsibility for, and control over, ‘their’ information instead of waiting for the Web Manager to administer changes in person was also high on the list of requirements. LIPA identified Interact Intranet as the way of achieving these goals.
The Solution
Before LIPA selected Interact, a skills group was assembled to conduct an evaluation of the options, which was eventually presented to the ICT Committee for approval. Eight open source options were evaluated. These were ultimately eliminated on the grounds of functionality and high total cost of ownership (in ongoing time and effort to support and maintain).
Three proprietary packages were also evaluated, including Interact. These options were evaluated against the following criteria:
- Usability
- Value for money
- Flexibility
- Future proofing
- Support and maintenance overheads
Interact was then adopted as LIPA’s Intranet and document management system. The Intranet was developed using the Interact platform which incorporates the following key features:
- Profiling of information so users see the correct and relevant information
- Content Management
- Staff directory
Benefits and Results
Interact provides a single source portal to store a knowledge base of information that is fully searchable in word files, pdf files or any other format. Multi dimensional look up of information means that it is easy for users to find what they need.
Interact facilitates document maintenance and document version control. The Staff Directory, which forms part of the core Interact system, automatically synchronises with Active Directory. This means that there is a single point for the entry of data. Interact integrates with Microsoft Outlook enabling staff to view others users’ calendar (where permissions are enabled) through a link in the staff directory.
The Advanced Document Management system enables LIPA to manage the creation, editing and version numbers of documents. This ensures that users have access to the latest version of a document.