Executive Summary

Project Charter There is a strong need for a centralized, streamlined way to communicate with all Rutgers employees. Email is used too heavily, and the messages may be lost or overlooked due to “email fatigue.” Messages may be text heavy and lose reader interest. Further, email listservs for different employee groups are fragmented and may not be entirely accurate, causing some people to not receive important messages and feel excluded.

In response to this common challenge, Rutgers should develop a widely used intranet (internal-facing webpage) that would become the “go to” source for internal messaging to current employees. It would be a central hub for daily updates, noteworthy Rutgers news, time-sensitive announcements, forms, important web-links, and other broadly used resources. This easily accessible intranet would be an important part of our organizational culture and contribute to a beloved community where all are “in the loop” on important news and communications.

Current Challenges and Opportunities • Email used heavily for internal communications, contributing to “email fatigue” and overlooked emails • Email communications are text heavy and may lose reader interest • Email listservs for different employee groups are fragmented and not always accurate

Scope of Project Based on the findings of stakeholder interviews and requirements gathering, the initial phase of the intranet project was focused on improving communication methods and promoting information sharing across the university as a whole.

Requirements Surveys, stakeholder interviews and data gathering were carried out to fully understand the needs of the faculty and staff.

Preferred Solution The project team believes using the myRutgers portal to be a favorable solution. It already includes readymade business applications, flexible platform to develop and tailor requirements to the organization’s needs, properly secured portal and has integration with existing Finance, HR, Space, Academic, and other university systems.

myRutgers has the capability to be used as “The Go To” source for internal messaging and resources for faculty and staff across all campuses fostering a sense pride in a “One Rutgers”.

Timescales of Project The functionality requirements, development and roll-out of the first phase is estimated to run over a period of 6 to 9 months. Subsequent phase timescales will be developed by the Project Implementation Team based on business needs. Details can be found on page 8.

Project Risks and Mitigation

A number of high level risks have been identified and how they will be tackled including: • Inadequate Governance and Oversight • Poor Content Ownership • No Ownership • Large Diverse Community Serving Different Population with Different Needs • Culture Change / Acceptance (by both the communicators as well as those receiving the communication) • Available resources

Details have been provided of how each risk will be mitigated, found on page 7.

Project Investment and ROI The upfront and on-going cost will be $125,000 and $530,000 (year-1) respectively, details can be found in Appendix 2.

Projected Return On Investment (ROI) figures for the solution in year one alone is estimated to be over $3,100,000, details can be found in Appendix 3.