Mining Data To Find Gold

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Mining Data To Find Gold

7/5/2007

By Linda L Briggs

At Coppin State University in Baltimore, MD, colorful screen displays can tell a dean or provost at a glance and a click of the mouse what a faculty member's course load is, how heavily a classroom is being utilized, and even how many students from a specific high school have applied and been accepted to date.

Because it's all done using business intelligence (BI) software that is specifically tailored for academia, the system can be up and running in a record amount of time--a big plus for a BI and data warehousing solution, which is typically a long, complex project.

The BI solution at Coppin State, from iStrategy Solutions, can be purchased with a variety of built-in data models specific to higher education. "That's the beauty of it," according to Ahmed El-Haggan, CIO and VP for IT at Coppin State. "Out of the box, [within] three days, you can start getting lots of reports and analytics, metrics, key performance indicators, and different dimensions.... That's unprecedented in the world of business intelligence."

As an example, El-Haggan cites student enrollment statistics. "A key performance indicator for us is where we are in enrolling students. That's a number we track closely." Using an iStrategy "dashboard," Coppin State administrators can constantly track that number, using a friendly screen display that makes it easy to peer directly into the accompanying data warehouse and view the numbers stored there from a variety of aspects. It's all done through a user-friendly, web-based front end that frees users from anything much more complicated than knowing what data is available, then clicking to display it.

"With one glance, you can see exactly where you are," El-Haggan said. So-called key performance indicators (KPIs) in iStrategy can trace information, such as how many students have applied, how many have enrolled, faculty loads, classroom utilization--virtually any view of collected data that an institution chooses to track. Dozens are delivered as part of the generic data model that iStrategy delivers; colleges and universities can create additional custom "hooks" into the data model as desired according to the specific business rules and processes of the institution.

The cost? El-Haggan said he estimates that Coppin State spent perhaps a tenth what it would have on licensing costs alone had it purchased a conventional BI product. If he adds the time and consulting fees saved, savings would be even greater: "It was a huge difference in cost."

Another cost savings with iStrategy: Because the data models are already created, institutions can avoid hiring full-time data warehousing or BI experts. "We empower users to get data on their own without [IS] getting involved," El-Haggan explains.

A key feature of iStrategy is that the company focuses on higher education. That's important because a big challenge with implementing business intelligence tools in higher ed is the lack of data models available.