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Opinion
Institutional Intelligence
Applying business intelligence principles to higher education
4/11/2007
Adopting Institutional Intelligence
Building an institutional intelligence program is an undertaking of real magnitude. It is a journey (not an event) that demands vision, commitment, and tenacity. A successful program is both mission-aligned and culturally aligned. For higher education institutions, mission-aligned means connected with and supporting the education, research, and service objectives of the institution. Thus the dashboards, scorecards, metrics, measures, and data have distinctly different focuses than those of a typical business intelligence program. Cultural alignment has both organizational and terminology implications. Program sponsorship, program management, and decision-making processes will all need to be adapted--to discover and develop best practices for institutional intelligence. The language used to describe an institutional intelligence program must also be adapted. While institutions have revenue and expense, profit and loss, they are less significant than in for-profit business culture. They are not the driving forces in which meaningful measures of mission achievement are found.
Institutional intelligence is on the horizon. Getting started requires substantial knowledge of business intelligence principles, combined with innovation that adapts them for institutional needs and challenges. To know and understand BI principles, study that which has been done by the most successful businesses. To adapt for higher education, become part of the small but growing community that is collaborating to discover and define institutional best practices.
The need is great, the challenges conquerable, and the rewards immense. Institutional intelligence is part of the future of higher education. Intelligence will pay off on many fronts: to recruit and retain the very best students, to recruit and retain top-quality faculty, to stand out in the crowded field of commodity education, to lead prestigious research projects, to deliver high-impact research results, to contain tuition costs, to maximize the value of the college experience, to avoid the risks inherent in regulatory compliance, and to advance the reputation and public perception of the institution. Institutional intelligence is undeniably challenging. Those who step up to the challenges will be well-positioned as tomorrow’s leaders in higher education.
[Editor's note: Dave Wells is the director of education for The Data Warehousing Institute's (TDWI) Spring 2007 World Conference, May 13-18, in Boston, MA.]
As TDWI's director of education, Dave Wells guides the content of TDWI conferences. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, an independent data warehousing consultant, and a contributing author to industry publications.
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