The Client
Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) is one of the premier business management schools of India. The institute is affiliated to the University of Delhi and has completed 50 years of successful existence making it the oldest B-school in India. The institute has been consistently ranked amongst the top 5 business schools in India and its alumni figures amongst the who’s who of Indian and global businesses.
The Objective
FMS approached IdeazLab to create an online presence for the institute. However the brief was much broader than just creating a website. The institute wanted to leverage the web technologies to create a platform for information exchange and knowledge sharing amongst the wider FMS community including current students, faculty, alumni, and the corporates. This online community platform was to serve multiple functions:
- Enable current students to interact and share knowledge and resources.
- Involve the FMS alumni actively in the progression of the institute.
- Generate more student-faculty and student-alumni interaction.
- Create online tools for facilitating corporate placements and admissions processes
- Build an online knowledge bank on seminars, papers, presentations and articles done by both students and faculty and make it available to the entire FMS fraternity.
- Provide a robust content management system enabling various student groups to manage their information flows, event postings, news items etc through one consolidated interface.
The Solution
IdeazLab developed an online Community of Practice (CoP) for the Faculty of Management Studies based on the framework of its proprietary products –
- Evolve: Online communication and collaboration solution (Learn more)
- K-Now – Online Knowledge management solution (Learn more)
The salient features of the FMS Online Community are:
- Anytime, Anywhere Access:
Since the FMS Online community is an internet based solution, it is available to all the members 24 X 7 X 365 irrespective of their time zone or location. The application provides an easy to use, consistent interface through an internet browser with no additional requirements of any download or software installation.
- Group based memberships:
The members are associated with groups which controls their access to various section of the online community. In this case the groups were current students further organised on the basis of their courses, alumni members, faculty and corporates.
- Secure Access
The FMS CoP provides a secure authenticated login based access to its members and has industry standard security and encryption features in place, delivering a secure environment for information exchange and collaboration.
- Knowledge Management
The application has a comprehensive knowledge management platform integrated with it that’s based on IdeazLab proprietary product K-NOW. This enables all members to share knowledge resources by uploading and downloading files in various formats. An advanced search and indexing feature makes it easy to find relevant content.
- Message Boards and forums
Administrators can create any number of message boards for member interactions. These message boards can be dedicated boards for specific batches or be topic-based discussion forums open to all members. The message boards can be created for restricted access for a certain member group and can have a moderator attached to them.
- Picture galleries
Members can create their own picture galleries instantly and share their images with members across the community.
- Member Profiles
The Member Profiles area provides a powerful and automated method to track and find information about all members of the community.
- Event Tracker
All events listed in member profiles, for example birthdays, anniversaries etc, are tracked and listed in the Event Tracker. An advanced search also enables members to search for events in member profiles.
- Content Moderation
An easy-to-use interface allows for detailed content moderation across The FMS community (announcements, contributions, discussions topics, messages, picture galleries, and files)
- Event calendar and announcements
This section enables the various student groups in FMS to post announcements, events and news items hence providing a complete bulletin board of the various activities going on in FMS.
- Automatic E-mail alerts
A number of automated e-mail alerts are generated. Members can subscribe to the alerts they want to receive.
The Results
- Before the Online Community became live, information was scattered and got distributed in the form of emails, circulars, bulletin boards, newsletters etc. The FMS Online community has consolidated all the information and has resulted in a more organised, streamlined communication flow in the institute.
- The community has increased interaction between students of different batches and courses hence creating a more interactive and collaborative learning environment.
- There has been a manifold increase in the alumni participation resulting in better placements and more opportunities for learning for current students.
- The Knowledge Management platform of the online community has grown bigger with time and has become a rich archive of knowledge and a valuable resource for existing and future members.
