Why Cascade
About our decision to switch content management platforms
Since 2011, Messiah has used Jadu CMS as its enterprise-level content management system (CMS). At that time, Jadu, a UK-based company, was seeking to expand into the U.S. higher education market. Over time, however, it has become increasingly evident that the platform's core functionalities are not fully aligned or able to keep pace with the unique needs of an academic institution, and the majority of their educational clients have subsequently moved away from Jadu.
A primary challenge we've encountered is that many of Jadu's features are originally/specifically tailored for municipal government use. This misalignment has led to a noticeable lack of essential functionalities necessary for managing and optimizing a university website effectively. Consequently, we have had to invest significantly in customizing the CMS to fill these gaps. These customizations have included enhancements to support academic program organization, integration with SmartCatalog for course information management, connectivity with Messiah University's single-sign-on system, and the development of tools for search engine optimization.
The CMS search committee consisted of various stakeholders representing the primary categories of web user groups at Messiah.
- Kris Hardy, director of web and digital marketing
- Jen Romanchak, web services manager
- Danielle Ran, director of communications
- Bethany Parliament-Chevalier, director of enrollment technology and communication
- Allen Snook, director of information security
- Tony Wyland, director of systems and network communications
- Lori Zimmerman, executive coordinator and project manager for advancement and university partnerships
Cascade has an outstanding reputation among higher education institutions and currently works with over 330 other colleges and universities like Temple University, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon and Syracuse Universities to manage their websites. The CMS Search Committee additionally conducted reference checks with multiple colleges and universities who are current users of Cascade.
Here are a few current Cascade client testimonials:
- Scott Menig, Web Marketing Manager, Macomb Community College: “I’ve worked with Cascade CMS for 8 years, and one of the things I love the most about the system is that it is continuously improving and getting better.”
- Rodrigo Silva, MScIS, Manager, Digital and Web Operations at Athabasca University: “I am very pleased with Hannon Hill…every time we need support, you reply within a couple of hours at most. Once a month, I speak with someone from the Success Team about Cascade. I had several universities contact me for reference checks, and I've always had wonderful things about the product.”
- Roberta Roebuck, Senior Web Application Developer, The University of San Diego: “The Hannon Hill support team is by far the best vendor support team I have ever worked with. They are knowledgeable, friendly, and extremely responsive. The training team has always come up with applicable trainings when requested and is always available for follow up questions if needed. Sometimes our training has been onsite at USD since there are west coast reps, which is great! Our sales contact, Blaine Herman, is always available for questions and help, and is absolutely great to work with. Overall, the personable staff are great to network with at the yearly conference, whether professionally or just having a beer with at the end of the day. It is obvious that the entire team that makes up Hannon Hill is invested in this company and product, and it shows through their attitudes and personalities, their hard work, and of course their end product that continues to get even better with each release.”
View more quotes and case studies here - https://www.hannonhill.com/our-customers/index.html
The web editing process will evolve to match the enhanced capabilities of Cascade CMS and all CMS users will all require training on the new system prior to the migration. For the time being, all web editors will maintain their current web access and web editing capabilities. For web support, you can continue to submit web help tickets at messiah.edu/web and reach out to Jen Romanchak with questions at jromanchak@messiah.edu.