Business Situation  The number of students in Citizen Schools programmes is expected to double by 2014, making a collaboration solution key to the organisation’s future. However, Citizen Schools’ Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007-based intranet functioned mainly as a repository for approximately 60,000 documents and didn’t support communications between head office and the field. Citizen Schools wanted an intuitive collaboration solution to support its national staff in educating children and strengthening communities. 

Solution  Citizen Schools decided to take advantage of the newly-released Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. It chose Avanade to help deploy the new solution based on the company’s proven expertise working with SharePoint Server 2010. The Avanade team mapped Citizen School’s business needs to the capabilities of the new SharePoint technology and delivered an extensible platform to engage campus and regional staff in organisational management and curricular development to foster innovation in learning and better serve students. The solution also offers built-in analytical capabilities to drive programme growth and functions as a valuable asset in building partnerships with outside organisations and donors.

Results  Citizen School’s new collaboration platform provides the following benefits:

• Encourages collaboration and innovation in teaching 
• Saved upgrade costs of (U.S.)$50,000
• 
  Helps showcase achievements to build partnerships and  rive donations