About

The National Academy Foundation (NAF) is the largest school-to-career program in the country, sustaining a national network of career academies to support the development of America's youth toward personal and professional success in high school, in higher education, and throughout their careers.  NAF Academies represent business/school partnerships that prepare young people for future careers through a combination of school-based curricula and work-based experiences. NAF Academies are two-to four-year academic and career-oriented programs that operate within existing high schools or as autonomous schools.

With their three current Academy themes (finance, information technology, and hospitality and tourism), NAF serves over 50,000 students with over 700 member academies in 41 states and the District of Columbia.  NAF is currently developing academies in the themes of engineering and health sciences and is adding approximately 50 new academies per year.

Challenge

As NAF adds more and more academies each year, the number of students, educators, and schools that are served by its Web site increase. The demands on the site were beginning to strain not only NAF’s existing proprietary content management system, but also the resources of the IT department, as two of their small IT staff were each spending about 20-35% of their time on Web edits and/or maintenance issues. Because of these challenges, George Pender, NAF’s Chief Technology Officer, spearheaded a team within NAF to look for a new content management system (CMS). During the search process, the Foundation also decided that they wanted a new Web site for their annual conference, where they were going to introduce new branding. This meant that, in order to update the Foundation’s Web site with the branding, the new CMS would have to be up and running within a short two and half month period.

Solution

One of the goals of Mr. Pender’s team during the comprehensive vendor search process was to find a CMS solution that would allow the Foundation’s staff – the majority of whom are non-technical educators – with an easy way to update their Web site. The search committee also had certain technical criteria on their list of requirements. One of the most important requirements was the ability to integrate existing databases and push user-specific content to the Academies in the field, which would allow for a “unique” experience for each registered user. In addition, they were looking for scalability so the system could grow as the Foundation grew; extensive technical support to free up IT resources; and training that could meet the high educational standards and expectations of the Foundation’s staff.

NAF approached their search process cautiously, as the investment in a CMS system was a large capital expense for the not-for-profit organization. “We’re not a big organization and an investment like this is a large part of my budget. There was a lot on the line with this expenditure so we did our due diligence through the search process,” says Mr. Pender.  He added that he felt it was important to choose a mid-market system from a stable company with a solid reputation with industry sources like CMSWatch.com.

And perhaps most importantly, it was necessary for whatever solution that the search team chose to be implemented and ready before the annual conference, which was a short two and a half months away.

After a month-long search, NAF sent RFPs to five mid-market companies: RedDot Solutions, Zope:Plone, FatWire, PaperThin, and Ektron. In the final analysis, NAF selected RedDot Solutions and their RedDot CMS and Live Server products for their new Web site project, based on the following benefits:

• Cost: Compared to the extensive list of other vendors and options they reviewed, including building a solution in-house, RedDot provided the right solution at the right price point.
• Easy implementation: RedDot was able to commit to the timeframe that was required.
• Reputation: RedDot is known in the industry as a well-reviewed and stable company.
• Training and support: NAF liked RedDot’s training materials, its training center, and call center, all of which would reduce the amount of IT resources needed for the Web site.
• The products: RedDot CMS, which was intuitive and easy-to-use; and RedDot Live Server which offered the ability to use existing databases and personalization capabilities.

Results

RedDot was able to commit – and deliver – within NAF’s required timeframe, and as Mr. Pender recalls, “I was up against a deadline that was driven by an event – our annual conference.  RedDot met with our President, our CFO, and myself and assured us that, although ambitious, they could work within our time limitations.  RedDot was good to their word.” 

After a very smooth implementation process of just a few weeks, RedDot CMS’ ease-of-use allowed NAF’s diverse groups of 15 users from various departments to easily edit the site’s templates.  The time the IT department spends on the NAF Web site has been dramatically reduced to about 5% and is focused on only administrative tasks, which is a big benefit for Mr. Pender since he has limited IT resources.  As he describes it, “It’s all about empowering the users to maintain the content themselves. Before it was an IT function.  Now, it’s a communications function.”

RedDot Live Server allows NAF to easily personalize reports and other information for the staff.  Mr. Pender comments, “I have to be able to deliver content to an amazingly diverse group of hundreds of people out in the field who have log-in privileges.  With Live Server, I can link to our existing databases and get our users the specific information that they want and need.”

The training provided by RedDot has met – and surpassed – the high educational standards of the Foundation.  “RedDot produced training materials based on our own Web site as opposed to generic materials.  This helped our staff learn what they needed to very quickly so they were independently making updates to the site within a few weeks of the implementation process.  In addition, RedDot has a nearby training facility and our own educators were impressed and satisfied with the training.”

Mr. Pender and the management of NAF are very happy with the decision to go with RedDot.  “Our staff likes using RedDot – they can edit and do what they need to do very easily.  Our biggest challenge now is to more fully utilize the system. It’s very powerful and it’s now up to us to do more.”

Facts and Figures

Customer:  National Academy Foundation

URL: www.naf.org

Site Launch: July 2004

Project duration: 3 months

Greatest challenge: Implementing a solution within a short timeframe

Editorial server: Windows 2000, RedDot CMS 5.6

Web server: Windows 2000, RedDot Live Server 2.2

Database server: Windows 2000, SQL Server 2000

Integrated components: SQL Server 2000, Custom PHP Applications, Custom ASP applications (including polls, interactive maps, login persistence to other sites and online applications, and others)

Site volume:  1,256