Building the Business Case for an Enterprise Web Ecosystem Project

Digital transformation is often treated as a time-bound project instead of a shift in approach. The enterprise web ecosystem is a strategic business asset and keeping it healthy is an ongoing effort–that means you need ongoing resources. You also need clear governance with ownership and accountability. 

All of these require understanding and support from leadership. If you haven’t been operating this way, getting leadership buy-in can seem monumental. But like any big effort, it can be broken down into smaller steps. With the right approach, you can build your case and get the right people on board. 

Identify Key Partners

An enterprise web ecosystem project is not purely a technical solution. It involves technical work, of course. But a well-functioning enterprise system depends on harmony among technical, marketing, and governance solutions. Success means working through all of these approaches together. 

At its core, the enterprise ecosystem approach is about strategic cooperation. Getting smart minds from all of these areas to work together is key. And that means getting leadership support from each of these areas.

Whether you are on the tech or communications side – or like some web teams, straddling the boundary – you’ll need to identify the leaders in both areas to support a web ecosystem project. But finding enthusiastic peers can also help you get that support.

Building Relationships by Listening

As you think about the benefits of a more functional web ecosystem, ask yourself, who else wants this? Who benefits from the changes that an ecosystem project could bring? Who has the social capital to help push for change? And who are the early adopters across the institution who could be enthusiastic partners and vocal supporters of the project? 

Find these people and get to know them. Listen to their concerns. Understand their priorities. These relationships will not only help build support to greenlight an ecosystem project. They will also help smooth the project process itself. An ecosystem is fundamentally about cooperation. You'll all benefit from building a shared vision and mutual understanding.

Assess Your Current State

Improving your enterprise web ecosystem starts with a clear and honest assessment of your current state. This includes purely practical considerations like:

• Identifying your key partners across the institution who can not only help secure leadership support but also collaborate for a successful project.
• Taking inventory of your current state to find the most compelling opportunities for improvement.
• Showing how an ecosystem project can address widespread problems, create efficiency, and support institutional business goals.
• Considering a smaller project as proof-of-concept to gain broad support for a larger ecosystem evolution.

Your partners across the institution will be helpful in gathering this information.

Assessment also includes more existential questions, including:

• What is working well now? What isn't?
• How do we define a website?
• What are the challenges that could be addressed by an ecosystem approach?
• What are the institutional priorities that could be better served by a healthier web ecosystem?
• Do we have the right people in the right spots to be successful?
• Where do we anticipate roadblocks and pushback?

A frank institutional assessment lays the groundwork for leadership buy-in. It shows you’ve done the due diligence. It gives you the right data to make the most compelling arguments. And it will inform your foundational strategy once the project begins. 

Framing the Cost-Benefit Analysis

To make a business case from this data, think about the financial implications of what you have learned. What opportunities exist to save or make money? A large, complex project requires investment. You need to pinpoint the outcomes that will make leadership say, "Let's do it!"

Look at how much money is being spent across the institution to support your current platforms. The figure should be comprehensive and include not only hosting costs, technology, and licenses but also human resources, and not just FTEs. How many hours are spent by staff members across the institution on this work? 

Finding Efficiencies

Make sure leadership sees how better cross-institutional coordination through an ecosystem could save money. How much money could be saved by consolidating platforms or subscriptions? Could better integrations save time and effort? How much staff time could be saved by better, more effective, more streamlined processes and tools?

Supporting Goals

You can also emphasize how an ecosystem project could address your institution’s biggest goals. For example, if there is a goal to attract more prospective students, and your current online experience is fractured, confusing, and not oriented toward prospective students, there is a misalignment between what the institution needs and what the institution supports. Just revamping the admissions site won’t cut it if program info is scattered and confusing. An enterprise web ecosystem project can help you create a more cohesive experience, making it easier for prospective students to find the information they need to choose your school. 

Use a Smaller Project to Gain Support

You might be able to get support for a smaller project that helps build buy-in for the larger ecosystem project down the road. For example, a discovery engagement that includes stakeholder interviews, some auditing, surveys, and a high-level strategy plan could be what you need to get broad leadership buy-in. 

Some leaders need to see the problems to understand why the solution is valuable. User experience testing on current websites to demonstrate the challenges that users encounter could also be used to gain broader support. 

A Discovery Project to Frame the Challenge

The University of Nebraska Omaha had made some investments in technology, but sought guidance on how to move forward. A discovery project, which included usability testing, helped identify problems with the current site. OHO delivered short- and long-term recommendations to transform the site into a strategic tool that showcases UNO's academic excellence and community mission while driving student recruitment. The insights uncovered in discovery can be leveraged to help secure resources for a full site re-architecture and brand-aligned redesign. 

Pilot Project: Duke University

A pilot project that covers a smaller portion of the broader ecosystem could also be useful. For example, Duke University’s enterprise ecosystem began with a smaller project: updating the services and admin sites. They redesigned those sites to have a similar look and feel, with some shared content types. 

That project then became the base for a broader redesign. “We used it to come up with something uniform and consistent, that ties into enterprise systems that can feed information,” said Jillian Kuhn, Senior Portfolio Manager, Duke Web Services. “Our goal was to make something consistent, reusable, and applicable to as many groups as possible.” News stories, calendar events, and scholar profiles are shared content that can feed into sites in their ecosystem.

Phased Approach: Drexel University

A phased approach might also appeal to leadership and suit budgeting cycles. Drexel University is one institution taking a phased approach to their ecosystem project. The vision is to move beyond a one-time technical migration and instead establish a sustainable, strategic digital framework. The plan is to empower their schools and colleges with the right tools, governance, and strategies to evolve their sites over time. To do this, they have a three-part roadmap:

Phase 1: Discovery and preparation. 
Understand the current state and clarify targets. Develop sitemaps, wireframes, technical components, and content mapping.

Phase 2: Migration and launch. 
Drexel IT executes the technical migration, while schools and colleges fill content gaps. OHO provides a custom content strategy to guide revisions on high-priority pages before launch.

Phase 3: Refinement and evolution. 
OHO conducts a content audit of newly launched sites and develops a roadmap for continuous improvement, covering SEO, governance, analytics, and future upgrades. 

Phased Approach: University of Rochester

Rochester is also taking a phased approach to building a unified, future-ready digital environment. Their target ecosystem will deliver a cohesive user experience, strategic content alignment, and scalable infrastructure that can evolve with the university's needs. The multiphase digital transformation is planned across four fiscal years:

Phase 1: Establish the core web technical solutions and relaunch the flagship rochester.edu experience. This includes implementing an integrated CMS strategy, a Rochester Core UI, single hosting solution, and SEO/analytics strategy.

Phase 2: Expand into student experience and academic support, bringing both external- and internal-facing sites (news, admissions, programs, academic units, labs, centers, admin/finance, policies) onto the new ecosystem.

Phase 3: Build a central site builder to power external and internal sites at scale, allowing distributed units to self-service while still benefiting from governance, shared design, and infrastructure.
 

Key Points: How to Get Leadership Support for your Enterprise Web Ecosystem Project

• Identify your key partners across the institution who can not only help secure leadership support but also collaborate for a successful project.
• Take inventory of your current state to find the most compelling opportunities for improvement. 
• Show how an ecosystem project can address widespread problems, create efficiency, and support institutional business goals. 
• Consider a smaller project as proof-of-concept to gain broad support for a larger ecosystem evolution.
   

Next Steps

Leadership buy-in doesn’t happen overnight—but it does start with you. Not sure how to begin? 

Gather a few allies, sketch out your current ecosystem, and begin the conversation. 

Pick one area of opportunity you can quantify, and use it to spark a bigger discussion.

A discovery project—stakeholder interviews, audits, and a high-level strategy roadmap—can give you the clarity and evidence you need to get leadership on board. If you’d like to talk about how to frame the case at your institution, we’d be glad to share what we’ve learned.