Since 2002, Universidad TecMilenio has become one of Mexico’s most innovative and successful universities. Starting as an offshoot of Tecnologico de Monterrey to prepare college students for the demands of the modern workforce, it has grown to 39 campuses in 21 states, as well as a virtual campus.

Part of their innovative approach is close collaboration with major technology enterprises in the Mexican market. Universidad TecMilenio has built educational/industrial parks in 5 of their campuses around Mexico where these and other companies have development offices, providing physical proximity to the university and hands-on opportunities for students.

As a university born in the 21st century, Universidad TecMilenio’s approach to communications and operations is very innovative. It relies on a sophisticated Website where students at each campus can enroll, add or drop classes, apply for or renew scholarships, request special exams, and learn about courses, opportunities and university events. Universidad TecMilenio also offers the “virtual campus” experience to students, where they can find a one-stop sign-in portal allowing the university community to access online courses as well as other e-learning resources.

The Universidad TecMilenio Website is a mission critical tool without which the university could not operate.

Critical to managing a mission critical Website for a university with 40 campuses is to ensure the brand is represented consistently, all information is accurate, and changes are implemented in a timely manner. This requires a highly sophisticated content workflow and approval process that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Dalia Garcia, Director of Communications and the person responsible for all Website operations, realized the university’s rapid growth had outpaced their ability to keep up with demand. After working with a few contract website maintenance firms in the past, García realized they needed a technology partner that could keep up with the constantly changing content requirements for all 40 properties, one of them fully online, in a timely and accurate manner, and at the same time maintaining brand consistency.

Universidad TecMilenio hired Sieena, a Los Angeles-based application development firm and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with nearshore development offices in Monterrey, Mexico to manage their Website; from updating content, design and developing applications, to technical support, routine maintenance, and mission-critical emergencies.

Leveraging its years of Website development experience, Sieena implemented a sophisticated workflow and maintenance system that enabled Universidad TecMilenio’s Website to deliver all the services and content students and faculty need such as:

• Content management
• Development of new site functionality and applications
• Design work
• Emergency & routine maintenance

Content or functionality requests from representatives at each campus are submitted on the project management application, each of these submissions is subject for review and approval by Garcia’s team. Once approved, Sieena’s team of dedicated technical account managers immediately receives the request and gets to work on the changes, implementing them in a staging environment.

Once initial changes have been made, the workflow system then notifies a 2nd Sieena team dedicated to Q&A, who reviews the work to ensure accuracy and tests for errors or usability issues. After the Q&A team gives the thumbs up, the changes are published to the live site.

Garcia said the decision to hire Sieena was a foregone conclusion.

“We liked their serious and professional approach to the task at hand. They not only implemented a solid process for maintaining and updating our website, but they are very proactive. They respond to every idea I have with feedback on how we can improve on that idea.”

The best part about working with Sieena? “They are available 24x7,” said García.

García explains that for extraordinary and urgent matters, Sieena does an excellent job. A recent visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a case in point.

“Our Monterrey main campus was chosen as the place where Secretary Clinton would give her speech. We had only 2 days to come up with a banner, and a micro site to announce her visit. These had to go live at midnight. Universidad TecMilenio’s communication team planned and designed the banner and the content for the micro site, while Sieena implemented it on the Website - all in less than 2 days- and right at 12:01am on the day of Secretary Clinton’s visit the banner ad and micro site went live.”

Garcia cites other mission critical, time-sensitive Website changes as examples of Sieena’s service.

“Every quarter we have to give students the ability to drop classes or renew their scholarships during a 1 week critical window of time,” García said. “The registration forms have to be available from 8am on the starting day until 8pm of the last day of that period, when these applications have to be completely removed from the site. Sieena has always done a great job of implementing this functionality for the specified time without any errors.”

In other words, García states that Sieena has flawlessly implemented the critical functionality Universidad TecMilenio needs to operate on the Internet and keep up their competitively in the current educational market.

TecMilenio will continue working with Sieena because; as García says “they offer excellent service.”

Since 2004, Sieena, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, has provided comprehensive IT support and nearshore software development services, including Rich Internet Applications and customized SharePoint portals. The award-winning Sieena development staff has built and maintained business-critical Web platforms for small-to-medium businesses up through large multi-national corporations. To learn more about how Sieena can meet your software development goals, e-mail us at contactus@sieena.com or visit our Web site at www.sieena.com.