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Special Annual Awards
2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Business Intelligence
8/1/2008
TRI-C PROJECT LEAD Jennifer Spielvogel worked to implement a better way to access data quickly and prime it for campus decision-makers.
TECHNOLOGY AREA: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Innovator: Cuyahoga Community College
Via an outstanding centralized campus BI effort, campus administrators and staffers don't just have access to data for improved strategic decision-making; data are pushed to them daily, to actually drive the decision-making process and help them quickly spot and even anticipate students' problems.
At Ohio's Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), a recent effort to revolutionize business intelligence has resulted in a single version of data truth and a single means for understanding student success. The resulting solution, One Institutional Intelligence, was built on new business intelligence technology from Microsoft. So far, at least according to Joe Smucny, the college's vice president of information technology services, the solution has allowed more staffers to have more access to more data more often, resulting in more frequent and better decision-making.
Data weren't always so organized, clean, and readily accessible at Tri-C. Previously, for instance, the daily enrollment management report took one individual anywhere from four to six hours to compile-- a laborious process, to say the least. It was no wonder, then, that in early 2007, project lead Jennifer Spielvogel, VP of institutional planning and effectiveness, turned to representatives from the Dayhuff Group, a local technology solution provider, to help the school implement a better way to access data quickly and prime the data for campus decision-makers.
After viewing the features of competing products from SAS, Business Objects, and Cognos, the team at Cuyahoga opted to go with a multipoint solution from Microsoft. The BI tools, which went live in November, include Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and ProClarity.
With the new system in place, the daily enrollment management report runs automatically in less than 10 minutes, and is pushed directly to the college's 100-member leadership in mere seconds. Report authors and users no longer need to worry about properly coding new/continuing/returning (NCR) status for students in that report; status is calculated nightly and automatically posted in the data warehouse.
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