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Jens Hørlück

Business consultant and project manager, Aarhus University

Biography

Jens Hørlück

Jens Hørlück has a MSc in Economics and Management. He started his career in the IT world 35 years ago as IT consultant and project manager before he returned to the university

For 25 years he held a title as associate professor at the Department of Management at Aarhus University interrupted by periods as project manager in private companies.

His research and teaching concentrated on IT implementation, IT governance and project management. In January 2009 he left academics and is now practising what he has been preaching to students for a quarter of a century.

Aarhus University

Aarhus University covers all major academic fields, as well as the entire research spectrum – basic research, applied research, strategic research and research-based advice to the authorities. In all degree programs, research and education are closely connected, and the research-based instruction – including teaching that spans the main academic areas – ensures the depth of the degree programs.

Until 5 years ago, Aarhus University had a tradition of autonomous faculties, centers and departments. Since then, a unification process has been going on, including both mergers and reorganization. As a consequence our web presentation was located on 8 different CMS, spanning more than 150 sites, each reflecting the local organization.

Aarhus University has 37.000 students and 8.500 employees.

Presentation

Creating a common web platform

Case: Aarhus University

Track: Web content management
Conference Day #2, Thursday November 4th, 10.30-12.00

In early 2009, the vision was to change the web strategy so that the University went from a web presence dominated by the information provider’s view, to a site structure focusing on the audience’s needs.

The first step has been to move all 200.000 pages into one platform by autumn 2010 – a technological as well as an organizational challenge.  The primary goal was to create a platform with high availability and maintainability. Among the sub-goals have been:

  1. Standardization – without limiting creativity too much. Our aim is to provide sufficient solutions to any need. However, any organizational unit can develop their own functionality, provided they use the proper change management procedures, and the result is integrated into the common set-up for everyone to use.
  2. Easy and decentralized administration of the rights of more than 600 editors.
  3. Creating a support organization to assist the editors in using the full spectrum of technological options.

The presentation will focus on the challenges that these goals and sub-goals pose in an organization with a decentralized culture and summarize lessons learned along the way.

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