The Talis Awards 2019: Excellence in Implementation and Management

The Talis Awards 2019 celebrated the brilliant work being done by our Talis Aspire users around the globe. It took place at Talis Insight Europe 2019. We are really pleased to announce the following winners and runners-up for the Excellence in Implementation and Management award.

The Talis Award for Excellence in implementation and management is for a university that shows dedication to implementing Talis Aspire, who have got stuck into the Talis Aspire community, and has shown impressive organisation and effort put in to achieve their migration goals.

Congratulations to the winner, University of the Highlands and Islands. Here’s why they won:

“The University of the Highlands and Islands are a small institution who are geographically widely spread. With most implementations, Talis see universities wanting to make their go-live date the beginning of an academic year, or the beginning of a semester, so we were taken by surprise when UHI wanted to go live in the middle of the autumn term. Their implementation not only consisted of setting up a reading list system but also a data migration from a previous system. UHI are to be commended on how they handled this process, they remained focused, ensuring that all academic staff were kept up to date as to the cross over period of using two systems, making sure that deadlines were met, and that all supporting material was in place. Having only been using Talis Aspire since November they have seen a growth in reading lists, and have been involved in the early testing of the DCS integration and new List Edit. UHI although dispersed have been a successful implementation, and are already sharing that experience with the wider Talis community, and with potential universities looking at reading list software. We look forward to continuing to work alongside UHI and are excited to see how they continue to shape the rollout and push boundaries.”

Congratulations also go to our runners up: the University of Oxford, London Metropolitan University and Regent’s University London:

“The University of Oxford have shown exceptional project management in their implementation and rollout of Talis Aspire. They have had a project group who have remained clear and focused at every stage of the implementation bringing the wider user group with them. The project group has met regularly and each time identified clear milestones that they are working on next. They spent time involving key focus groups of both academics and students, ensuring that at every stage they were meeting the requirement needs of each group. At every stage Oxford have known where they wanted to go next with the project and where the next goals and success would be. It has been a pleasure to support the University of Oxford in their implementation, and we look forward to continuing to work with them as they push the boundaries of rolling out a reading lists system, and how to get all engaged.”

“London Metropolitan University amazed us by not only implementing a new reading list system, but also a new Library Management System over the summer of 2018, this is no mean feat! The project team remained focused and knew the timelines they were working towards, and that all services were delivered and integrated with each other in a timely manner. The Library Team then worked really hard to engage academics, delivering training, and have reached a high percentage of list coverage in a short space of time. The team are clear where they want to take the roll out next and what their focus is and we look forward to supporting them in this.”

“Regent’s University of London (Regent’s) begun implementation late last year. They are a small library team with people multitasking in roles. They have impressed the Talis team by maintaining a focus on their implementation, despite the other pressures on their time. Since Talis delivered onsite training in January 2019, Regent’s have quickly worked to add lists into the system from a standing start (no previous reading list system). They have a clear rollout plan in place to have content available to students from September, and they have also worked to quickly add the Reviews area of the system into their workflows. They have been a great example of how a small focused (but stretched team) can implement and rollout a system.”

Congratulations to all of the winners and runners-up. We are thrilled to be able to celebrate with you each year and to watch our user community achieve great things.

Find out about the other award category winners here. If you’d like to see more content from Talis Insight Europe 2019, click here.