Personnel, policy, procedures, and tools will all be put into place only in so far as they contribute to meeting the objectives. A single point of management should be available for as many site management functions as possible. View access should be widely distributed. A single point of management is needed to minimize the number of different interfaces staff have to learn, promote consistency of management across platforms, reduce the possibility of error and omission, leverage professional staff, and reduce the time and effort to find essential information. View access should be widely distributed to make this tool directly available to other University IT providers so they can resolve problems and questions faster and without depending on UMS staff.
Fewer vendors are better than more vendors.
Site management products that are already in use at UMS are better than products with which we have no experience. The purchase price is a relatively small part of the cost of a tool. The costs of implementing and learning a tool are also significant. UMS will take the maximum advantage possible of investments it has already make in implementing and learning tools. UMS will focus first on the functions that make the greatest contribution.