Of interest to I.T. managers, records management and administration managers
in UK universities and FE colleges - apologies for cross-posting,
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Is your institution potentially interested in electronic document
management, on-line forms, workflow and virtual projects and secure document
sharing all across the web?

CHEST, the joint I.T. purchasing body for UK universities and FE colleges,
is considering opening negotiations with Opentext, a market leading supplier
of electronic document management systems.  This is with a view to making
this system available across the HE sector at a special campus price.  If
your university is interested _in principle_ (no commitment required) in any
of the following, it is important that you express this immediately to CHEST
(contact details below) in order to confirm that there is sufficient
interest from the academic community in order to conduct negotiations.

Here at the University of Manchester, we have been using the product
('Livelink') for a year and a half now, and along with the University of
North London, have had a positive experience of the product.  It is quite
versatile and mostly does sophisticated electronic document management
(scanning in documents for storing, or saving directly to the system for
shared document storage and retrieval).  The objective is to reduce the
mountains of paper everywhere and provide ready and secure access to
documents, with a sound audit trail.  However, Livelink also does virtual
project collaboration, discussion groups,intranet management, electronic
forms linked to workflow, electronic calendaring, etc. - and it integrates
with other standard software (ie. we have integrated it successfully with
Oracle).   At Manchester, most of our existing and planned applications
involve using it to streamline administrative business process (through
on-line forms, workflow and scanning in documents for handling/storage).
UNL on the other hand, have been using it for academic (on-line teaching and
learning) purposes.  More info on the product is available at
www.opentext.com

The software offers tremendous potential for I.T. - enabling a wide range of
projects across the academic community, and it would be a shame if we could
not get a CHEST agreement in place so that universities would at least have
the option in the future, of buying the system at a specially-negotiated
campus price.

If you have any current or future interest in the above functionalities,
then please ensure that you contact Nikki Green (CHEST manager) by end May
to express your interest in principle, so that negotiations can go ahead.
This does not commit you in any way to buying the product, it is just
affirming the interest of the academic community in having Livelink
available at a campus price.  Please e-mail Nikki at
[log in to unmask], with the subject line of Livelink if you would like
to see an agreement available for this product.

Thanks
Shelley Willson
Project Manager
University of Manchester

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Shelley Willson
Project Manager
The One-stop-shop Project
Office of the Registrar and Secretary
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL  UK

t.  0161 275 5782
e.  [log in to unmask]
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