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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE IN ACTION

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by admin

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“We were a very different university about one year ago,” says Keith Werosh, registrar at the National University of Health Sciences (Ill.). He is referring to the operation pre-BI. NUHS installed BI from Business Objects a year ago. “Prior to having this system, we were departmentalized. Information was kept on spreadsheets throughout the university,” he says. The Registrar would have relevant data, but not related information. “Paper touched hands a number of times. Other offices would even rekey the information,” explains Werosh. As a result, NUHS officials wouldn’t have a picture of the enrollment process until weeks into a term.

A BI solution was in order. Even so, NUHS didn’t rush into deploying one. “During a two-year time frame, we discussed what we needed and how we were going to achieve it,” adds Werosh, who was the executive on campus tapped to “get the ball rolling” because much usage would be centered around the registrar’s office.

After the investigative period, NUHS invested approximately $200,000 in a BI system supplied by Business Objects.

The benefits have been multifold. Today the registration process is clearly viewed instantly. “We can process information on the spot,” Werosh reports. NUHS can even determine the peak registration time during the day. For example, most online student traffic falls between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. “We added additional staff at that time to handle the traffic. Student workers were added to key areas and computer labs since more online use would lead to more questions. Others worked the telephones and were able to call back immediately to those students who had contacted online, but who wanted follow-up,” he says.

Florida State University adopted BI several years earlier, according to Rick Burnett, director of student information management. “We saw data as the low-hanging fruit and wanted to start using it to figure out the best students to target.” To that end, the university, which enrolls 40,000, uses a BI system that links to its CRM system from Talisma, its databases, and other resources, to determine which classes are filling up the fastest. “An alert goes out when a course is 80 percent full.” This, in turn, affects room scheduling, and gives fodder for studying other course offerings.

BI has also added a layer of sophistication to the admissions strategy. Officials at FSU, which receives 55,000 applications each year, once had to cull through each file and hand-code information. If at the end of the decision cycle there was a change in the admissions criteria (such as the need for slightly higher GPA requirements), decision-makers would have to retouch all the files again.

Setting a BI query avoids all that. A new list of qualified applicants can be produced within 30 minutes.