Case Study: Northern Illinois University modernizes campus communications, boosts student collaboration, and saves millions with Microsoft Project

Northern Illinois University Offers a Lesson in Campus Communications With Office 365

Northern Illinois University needed to modernize and unify campus productivity tools to give students a mobile, collaborative learning experience and reduce infrastructure and licensing costs. Working with Microsoft Project, NIU migrated more than 19,000 students (and earlier 3,300 faculty and staff) onto Office 365 services—including Office Delve, SharePoint Online, Skype for Business Online, OneDrive and Project Online—to replace disparate apps and legacy systems and deliver a single, connected tenant for the whole campus.

Microsoft Project helped implement Office 365 across campus and provided consulting and support to drive adoption through multi-channel outreach and training. The move eliminated $2.25 million in upgrade costs, delivered $850,000 in annual savings from the faculty/staff migration, and provided roughly $400,000 in annual student value while improving faculty-student collaboration, mobility, and access to shared tools like Skype for Business and SharePoint Online.

Northern Illinois University

Brett Coryell

Chief Information Officer