What does a Talis implementation look like? Hear from our recent customers
You’ve selected Talis Aspire, you’ve signed the paperwork… now what? In this blog post, we explain what the implementation process looks like at Talis, and why we believe the support of the Services and Consulting Teams is vital. You’ll also hear stories from recently joined customers on the highlights of their implementations.
We currently have 94 customers, which means 94 implementations have been carried out by our Services and Consulting Teams. These 94 implementations were all different as every university has different time limits and goals. There are a lot of variations from the Library Management System to the Discovery Layer to the structure of their library teams.
So who are the Services and Consulting Teams? The Services Team are our front line at Talis, they will be the ones you go to if you have a question, a challenge that you want help with overcoming, or just to find out more about a certain topic that affects Talis Aspire. Here at Talis we know the value of constant support and communication. Our Services Team pride themselves on building relationships with our universities and understanding your workflows and processes. In fact, two members of the team are former higher education librarians, so they have first-hand experience of the challenges and pains of your roles.
The Consulting Team also provides a high level of support and help to our universities, however, from a more technical standpoint. The Consulting Team know how you can make the most out of Talis Aspire with integrations and data – and if they don’t, they will work with you to find out!
As with any well-established process, we have a clear set of tried and tested steps that we work through with new customers during the implementation process. It begins with a Tenancy Setup Questionnaire (TSQ), which is a document that is completed by the project team at your institution.
Once we have the completed TSQ, and the project team is confirmed, we organise an implementation project webinar where we discuss an outline of the implementation with the key steps and timelines and answer any questions you may have. The implementation is managed using a third-party online tool called Base Camp, where both Talis and your project team can access and view the tasks and timelines for the project. We find that this helps keep everyone in the loop and the progression is clear.
After the initial webinar, we organise a call to move onto discussion around the technical aspects of your implementation. Both teams leave with a good understanding of the options available within the scope of technical work possible with your university and Talis Aspire. From there we are able to determine the time required to complete any technical setup and allow you to make a decision on whether to add these to your implementation. Talis have worked with many systems throughout implementation and we ensure before the project starts that Talis Aspire can integrate with all of your systems.
The final step is setting up your tenancy. Once this is done, we carry out a number of ‘fine tuning’ tasks such as adding your institution’s branding to the tenancy. We ask the institution to sign off on the implementation, and then you are ready to start using your online reading lists!
We spoke to some of our recent customers, to hear what they thought of the implementation process:
Aston University selected Talis Aspire online reading lists and copyright management, having previously used Rebus:list. Alongside the main implementation, we worked with them on a data transfer of lists from Rebus:list as a side project, working to tight timescales to get them up and running. Caroline Long, Information Resources Specialist and Emma Hollinshead, Systems Specialist at Aston University shared their thoughts on the implementation with us.
“Right from the start of the project, we were impressed by the support we received from Talis. They were happy to work to a very tight schedule to move us from our previous reading list system in time for the start of the new Academic year, and despite the usual teething problems, they delivered a working system on schedule. We have an unusual set up here and they worked hard to sort out issues with authentication, above and beyond the implementation project.
Our designated contact, Emma Dodd, responded quickly and efficiently, delivered excellent training, and was ever-patient and helpful. The Base Camp system worked well at keeping everyone informed, and we have had prompt and helpful responses now we have moved to normal support. We could not have managed this project as successfully without the excellent support we received.”
Southampton Solent University had their own unique requirement for the university citation style to be included in their setup. Due to the university requirements, we were unable to add in the same way as other citation styles, so the team completed a bespoke piece of work to directly add this in for them.
James Clark, Library Systems Manager at Southampton Solent University, told us that “Solent had a special requirement that one of our citation styles had to be loaded into our tenancy independently – we could not make it available in Zotero. Talis undertook to do this in advance of the launch of our service, kept us informed of progress, and completed the work in plenty of time.”
The Talis Services and Consulting teams love working closely with you to achieve your goals and to help you make reading lists and copyright management successful at your institution. If you would like to find out more about this process, or get a demo of Talis Aspire, please get in touch with our Sales Manager Paul Dibble at paul.dibble@talis.com.
