The HEUG chooses Socious for Online Communication for its Board and members.
The Higher Education User Group (HEUG) is a group of PeopleSoft customers from some 700 higher education institutions. The group was the largest user group for PeopleSoft, and now that the Oracle merger has taken place, is the largest Oracle user group in terms of both online and conference participation. HEUG is the world’s largest volunteer run higher educational software user’s organization and, after EduCAUSE, is the largest single organization which focuses exclusively on information issues within higher education.

”HEUG.Online, developed and supported by Socious Inc., allows the Higher Education User's Group the extraordinary opportunity to essentially have a year-round 24x7 user conference involving more than 13,000 individuals.

Higher education has a long-standing culture of sharing. As institutions committed to discovery we love to tell others what we've done, how we've done it, and why it made a difference. Socious’ software lets us share files, plans, documents, training curricula, and presentations. It helps keep us informed, allows us phenomenal search capability across our entire knowledge base, and does it in a ways that enhance our individual project organizations and their coordination. It allows us to track issues, manage e-mail traffic, and compartmentalize digital information in ways never before available.

In short, Socious software keeps HEUG effectively and efficiently connected allowing us to focus on discovery and the easy sharing of what we learn."

- Tom Scott
Communications Committee Chair
HEUG

HEUG's Challenge

The HEUG is a volunteer run organization with no permanent paid staff. Their website was being hosted by a member institution and their ListServs, which were their primary means of communication outside of the conference, were hosted by another institution. Keeping the information up-to-date and building on the success of their ListServs was something the HEUG wanted to do, but was constrained by the time limitations of their volunteers. The HEUG’s only source of income was their annual conference ( HEUG does not charge dues to its membership, either institutionally or to individuals) so the implementation of an online communication tool would have to come out of the conference proceeds, unless another means could be found.

The Solution

Socious worked with the HEUG to offer the Socious Tool solution. The HEUG created a committee to help drive the content for the website and Socious manages all of the tasks related to converting past ListServ threads and stored files into the Socious Tools solution. Socious also recreated the HEUG’s external website within the toolset. This allowed information that was being shared in the secure area of the site, such as news stories and contact information, to be easily available on the external website.

Socious initially loaded 5,500 members into the membership database and converted all of the existing ListServ addresses into the Socious Tools solution. The process was seamless and never noticed by the members, active communication was never interrupted. One year later, the HEUG had over 10,000 users and two years later boasts over 14,000 users. This has been attributed to the ease of use of the system and the ability for members to get information from the system without having to be in the system all of the time.

Socious also partnered with the HEUG to create a vendor program that would offset all of the costs of the application and services provided by Socious. In fact Socious manages all of the sales, contracts and payments for the vendor program. The HEUG gets a revenue share based on the sales of the vendor program which has turned into a significant annual revenue stream.

Benefits

A vibrant and active membership was critically important to the HEUG. Socious provided the opportunity outside of the face-to-face user’s conference to engage members and get them involved with the HEUG. The membership received a new and valuable communication tool so they can get their issues addressed quickly and easily. The HEUG Board now has a central communication method where they can provide information, solicit feedback and help members connect with each other. HEUG’s costs for the site are all covered by the vendor program and the program actually is a revenue source for the HEUG. The partnership between Socious and the HEUG has been an extraordinarily complete success for both sides.