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OBFS Website Redesign Project

The OBFS Website Redesign Project aims to launch the new Business and Finance (BusFin) website March 19, 2024. This revamped site will feature a modern look, updated branding, and improved content organization, aligning with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and the latest University of Illinois System branding. Notably, the URL will transition to BusFin, aligning with the updated branding. The primary objectives are to enhance the user experience, facilitating the easy location of essential information for financial responsibilities, and to increase overall operational efficiency.

The timeline of the new Business and Finance website redesign process. Phase one lasted from August 2020 to May 2021 and involved the assessment of the previous website. Phase two lasts from May 2021 to January 2024 and involves Design and Development, Topic-Based Navigation, and Content Review and Testing. The current state of the project is most of the way through the Topic-Based Navigation milestone. In the final milestone of Content Review and Testing, subject matter experts will be reviewing content to ensure it is easily accessible, and testing will be conducted on the Business and Finance news and the new website to eliminate bugs and ensure ease of use. The planned launch of the new Business and Finance website is January 2024.

Phase 1 (Complete)

The initial phase started in Spring 2021 and was an inventory gathering of website content to help audit, analyze, document and migrate content to the new website.

  • Content Inventory - The first effort initiated by the project team was to develop a complete and accurate inventory of the OBFS website to document all ownership of content on the site. A round of interviews was conducted with business and finance units that own content on the site.
    • After the interviews were completed, the inventory process began. This effort resulted in the documentation of over 1,300 webpages and connecting those pages with a specific unit that is the content owner.
  • Community Engagement (focus groups and surveys)
    • The project team developed and delivered a survey in Fall 2020 focused on the usability of the current site and users’ opinions of the site. The survey was also used as means to select representative samples of employees to participate in focus groups about the current site.
    • In the spring of 2021, the project team expanded the usability analysis effort to gather more information about issues users experience when using the existing site in order to develop our final design recommendations. The team began by creating and distributing a second survey focused on functionality based on user needs.

Phase 2 - Design and Development

This phase consists of validating the findings from Phase I and implementing user recommendations, based on multiple surveys and focus groups, into a design that will accommodate the content. The website design will have a user-friendly interface with easy to navigate menus and an intuitive search engine. In Phase 2 we plan to organize content by function, not by units. This recommendation is based on community feedback.

February 24, 2024 Update

There will not be a stakeholder meeting as previously scheduled for Thursday, February 29. However, a BusFin preview session scheduled at 9:00 AM will cover any of the updates that would be addressed in the stakeholder meeting. Please see the information below about registering for this or any of the other upcoming sessions.

We are in the final stages of building the BusFin site. Our focus over the next two weeks will be developing the Buying & Contracts, Policy, and Forms sections. 80% of the site is built and currently being reviewed by content owners.

If you have been sent content for review, your deadline for providing feedback is end of the day Friday, March 1. We cannot guarantee that feedback received after that date will be accommodated before go-live on March 19. If you have not yet received content for review, it should be sent out next week. Given the tight timeline, you will have no more than 5 business days to complete your review.

Keep in mind, that after the BusFin site launches on March 19, we will resume our normal process of editing website content. Any changes requested prior to go-live that are not completed by March 19 will be made shortly after go-live. Additional requests for edits, updates, or additions after March 19 can be submitted to sharedservices@uillinois.edu and we will process the request as usual.

February 12, 2024 Update

We are approaching the Business and Finance website anticipated go-live date of March 19. In preparation for this launch, we will be offering preview sessions for a more detailed look at the areas of the new website that specifically interest you.

Find the registration options below. You can register for more than one if you would like.

Resources

Previous Meetings

Archive

Contact

If you have questions, please contact Derek Briles (Project Management) or Filip Przybysz (Change Management) at sharedservices@uillinois.edu.

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