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101 BEST PRACTICES >> Administrative IT

11/24/2006

94 :: SUBJECT-MATTER EXPERTS FOR DATA WAREHOUSING

Key to building a data warehouse is bridging the longstanding gap between IT and business. More so than with many other technology solutions to business problems, data warehousing tests the bridges between IT and the rest of the campus. At the University of Illinois, for instance, the bridge between IT and business is largely handled by three “functional area coordinators.” These subject-matter experts focus on three key data areas: students, finance, and human resources. They act as liaisons between their areas of specialty and the data warehousing team. According to Aaron Walz, business architect for the Decision Support team, these individuals “translate what the customers are saying, putting that into a language that the technical staff can understand.” Yes, any significant IT initiative needs the business side of the house on board. But in such a case, IT really needs to understand what questions the business side needs to ask—and at a much higher level, because today, schools are looking to analytics. That means that the people who know how to produce reports—often highly technical IT staff within the DW group—need a deep and broad understanding of what drives the institute. More info here.

95 :: INSTITUTION, ASSESS THYSELF

In the past, staffers at most schools carried out many assessment functions by hand. Nowadays, however, a growing number of schools are embracing data-driven web-based interfaces and new data analysis techniques to ease the process. Schools such as Texas A&M University, the University of Central Florida, the University of California-Davis, Western Washington University, and Flagler College (FL) are utilizing new advances in institutional assessment tools in order to improve performance across the board. Some have turned to vendors such as Jenzabar and SunGard Higher Education for help. Yet, interestingly, many notable advancements in institutional assessment are proprietary. At Texas A&M, for instance, technologists have developed a homegrown database, based on Microsoft Access, to chart institutional performance by keeping tabs on what’s happening with faculty members. The database, which users can access from a web-based interface, tracks various stats about faculty productivity for publishing, grants, awards, editorships, classes taught, and graduate students completed. University administrators utilize data from the program to evaluate individual programs, certain clusters of departments, and sometimes even the school as a whole. More info here.

96 :: CONSIDER ADMIN IT BY CONSORTIUM

Thinking about power in numbers? TheWisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities is currently engaged in a six-year process to perform the administrative support functions of its 20 members on a collaborative basis. The object: to control institutional costs. Three members of WAICU (Lakeland College, Ripon College, and Wisconsin Lutheran College), with different constituencies and business processes, created the WAICU Educational Technology Consortium to purchase, implement, and support a common administrative system (provided by Jenzabar, via a fixed-price, not-to-exceed contract). The Milwaukee School of Engineering joined the consortium in May 2006. To date, the following savings have been realized on a per-school basis: software (80 percent), maintenance (40 percent); MS'E saved nearly $1 million over 10 years on maintenance costs alone. The first three schools went live in just 10 months instead of the usual 18. And by collaborating, the schools have also saved on implementation travel-related expenses and training, and have pooled resources, knowledge-sharing, and user group opportunities. All of this has resulted in increased buying power for future projects.

97 :: DW SUCCESS: MARKET THE RAISON D’ETRE

Part of the data warehouse challenge is the constant effort to explain its usefulness to users. “‘Build it and they will come’ is a very ugly myth,” says Aaron Walz, business architect for the Decision Support team at the University of Illinois. When the university erected its new systemwide enterprise resource planning (ERP) structure, some of the standard mainframe reports were duplicated, but not all. Even so, Walz says, users “still had to be convinced that coming to the warehouse was worth their time and that they needed it. You have to provide something that is very targeted to what they’re trying to do, so they can see that it’s helpful.”

His group puts ongoing effort into promoting the warehouse, including training sessions and periodic messages to everyone with a warehouse account, encouraging them to use it. The Decision Support team also analyzes who’s using the warehouse and how, and uses that information to drive marketing efforts. “We also make presentations to different groups on campus, such as human resources and business managers. We tell them, ‘Hey, here’s what you can do with the data warehouse.’” Walz says. “If it takes too much time, or if it’s too complicated to get access, they just don’t use it.” More info here.

98 :: MORE DW HELP: ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

One way that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY) uses its data warehouse is to track admissions closely by answering questions like: “Are we attracting the types of students we want? How well are we translating student inquiries into applications? How about converting those applications into admitting students?” When a new strategy for attracting students was introduced recently, the results were immediately available on a daily basis from the data warehouse via analytic dashboards. What’s more, because Rensselaer is a large research university, it finds the data warehouse useful for monitoring research, with questions like: “Where, exactly, is our research money coming from? Who’s performing the research—are they working through the university or the research center?” Unlike in the past (before new data warehousing systems and processes were put into place), “It’s very easy now to slice and dice, and everyone agrees on the numbers,” says RPI Data Warehouse Program Manager Ora Fish. More info here.

99 :: SCALING UP TO PAPERLESS FOR DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING

At Pittsburgh State University (KS), a document imaging system, now deployed in 17 departments in two campus locations and including some 1.1 million documents, is helping to streamline processes, cut back paper-based storage, and even address disaster recovery planning issues. Using Perceptive Software’s ImageNow document management, imaging, and workflow software, university staff have single-click access to documents from either campus location. The system is managed by an administrative team at PSU that has employed a staged implementation strategy that began with just three departments— financial aid, undergraduate admissions, and the registrar—and allows a cost-effective expansion to a campuswide solution.

And at Tulane University in New Orleans, where administrators would have to wade through student records for 11 colleges in the event of another disaster, the institution has deployed an enterprise content management (ECM) solution from Digitech Systems. The system has enabled administrators to cut the standard three-day information access time by 66 percent, has allowed the university to regain 160 man-hours per month, has enabled vastly improved customer service, and has greatly boosted disaster preparedness. Three layers of application security ensure that users are only granted appropriate access to allowed functionality and data.

100 :: THE COMMUNITY SOURCE EXPERIENCE

Lee Belarmino, San Joaquin Delta College (CA) associate VP of IT, on the Kuali (community source financials) partnership experience: “Initially, we thought we might get swallowed up by the large universities involved [with the Kuali project]. But it’s clear to us now that it’s a level playing field. What’s important are your ideas, your ability to produce, and how you get along with the community. Another good thing,” he adds: “We’ve found that Kuali is totally driven by the functional people. They decide how the system should operate and behave, and the developers have to come through. We’ve completed our first deliverable, which is our test drive.” More info here.

101 :: POWER UP EVEN A TINY ADVANCEMENT OFFICE

Sometimes, improved revenue streams can be realized by empowering even the smallest college or university department. At Union University (TN), the Advancement office was being held back by an outmoded legacy system, but administrators were concerned about transitioning the small (yet all-important) group of fundraising staffers to a new, more sophisticated system. The hardware platform was due to be discontinued, so administrators decided to take the opportunity to evaluate other software solutions; they went with Datatel’s Colleague Advancement, which offered the cleanest user interface.

“Our legacy system was not very user-friendly and the development officers had never been able or willing to learn the system,” says Director of Computing Services Karen McWherter; “A more user-friendly interface would help them to do their own data entry and information lookup. With the web user interface of the new system, they are going to be able to do that. We have a very small Advancement department, so getting everyone involved in using the software will make them all more effective.”

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