Analytics

U Buffalo Takes Student Service Reporting Online

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/26/10

The University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, is implementing a new application to obtain self-service reporting and analysis of institutional information specifically related to student services. The university recently announced that it would be running iStrategy HigherEd Analytics for Web-based reporting and analysis of student data. The project, which has been underway since July 2008, is being executed now; the university said it expects it to be completed by February 2012.

The analytics program, which provides a pre-packaged data warehouse application and analytics tools, integrates with Oracle PeopleSoft, SunGard Higher Education Banner, and Datatel Enterprise Education Platform, all common applications in the higher education environment.

"iStrategy clearly understands the challenges of higher ed data warehousing and analytics," said Gary Pacer, manager of application development. "The iStrategy HigherEd Analytics solution takes what is a very complex ERP database and, out of the box, provides data models, [extraction, transformation and loading] (ETL), metrics and reports to get you up and running. This was a big attraction for us."

Pacer added, "From an IT perspective, we are impressed with the solid technical engineering put into the iStrategy solution. From a business user perspective, our 'knowledge workers' are excited by the possibilities of enhanced decision making and business benefits achieved using easily accessed and actionable student analytics found in the iStrategy solution."

Anderson University in Indiana and LDS Business College in Salt Lake City have also announced recent adoption of the software.