Largest campus bookseller will tie into campuswide web networks
Follett Higher Education Group, the largest operator of campus bookstores, has agreed to integrate its online bookstores with Campus Pipeline Inc., which offers a web platform that ties many aspects of campuses together.
Follett will become a lead member of Campus Pipeline`s Platform Partners program, a group of higher education software and services vendors that will develop applications based on the Campus Pipeline Web Platform`s open integration and presentation capabilities.
"Campus Pipeline has a proven track record in successful enterprise implementations of a unified digital campus, and will be the ideal partner for innovative applications providers such as Follett," said Scott Deaton, executive vice president of Follett Higher Education Group. "Follett and Campus Pipeline plan to enable each student to be presented with a personalized list of all the books and materials they need -- both new and used. We were the first company to sell textbooks online back in 1995, so this will be a natural evolution of our ongoing strategy: to continue to use the best technology to make textbook buying faster and easier."
Follett and Campus Pipeline plan a pilot program to demonstrate how integration can make it easier for students to purchase books online, help the bookstore more accurately forecast textbook demand, and improve the process of textbook adoption by professors, thus ensuring the books are available in the bookstore when the students need them.
"This kind of integration is the realization of the unified digital campus our customers have been asking for, to use information from one campus system to personalize and improve the user`s experience on another campus system,” said Tom Lewis, chairman and CEO of Campus Pipeline. “Our open standards approach allows institutions to choose the combination of software products from multiple vendors that works best for them, then link them all together."
The Campus Pipeline system allows the exchange of information between campus systems that include student information, bookstore, alumni, registration, course tools, e-mail and calendar, news distribution, e-business solutions, and other technologies.
Follett serves more than 4 million students and 300,000 faculty through more than 680 stores.
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