The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is the largest university in the Netherlands, with over 35,000 students, 6,000 employees and 3,000 PhD candidates. The university offers no fewer than 62 bachelor’s and 73 master’s programmes.
The challenge
Within the UvA, a complex brand architecture is in place. This brings multiple challenges in brand management, particularly in the management of templates and content within the organisation. The UvA was seeking tools which, in combination with Office 365, would allow its staff to easily create correspondence and presentations in line with the brand guidelines.
Our solution
VIM Group was asked to assist with this brand management challenge and, in collaboration with its partner Templafy, implemented one template per medium across the entire university. After the kick-off and determining the scope of the project, the new templates were rolled out within two months. The new templates for Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint were made available to all UvA staff. This gave everyone in the organisation easy access to relevant content, enabling staff to quickly and easily create ‘on brand’ correspondence.
Chevelie Vermaning, Communications Advisor & Brand Manager
The result
Thanks to the close collaboration between UvA, Templafy, and the professionals at VIM Group, it was possible to follow a structured and integrated approach during the implementation phase. Templafy was implemented in a short period. This tool allowed the UvA to introduce structure and coherence in the presentation of its brand. Due to the complex brand architecture, the UvA had previously maintained over 75 different files in PowerPoint alone. Now, they work from one standard template. Changes can be quickly and easily made in real-time by communication colleagues themselves. As a result, there is no longer any dependency on IT workflows and capacity within the organisation, making the process of adjustments less error-prone.
Additionally, by using Templafy, the UvA can now easily make logos, images, and icons from its image library - previously accessible only to communications staff—available to all staff within the academic community. This allows staff to easily apply the UvA brand in a dynamic way.
Because the Templafy template management system is integrated with the Bynder image library, images and other brand assets can be easily imported. All the different assets for the correspondence set are directly available to UvA staff.
