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Business Intelligence
Strategic BI for All
8/1/2008
For small to midsize schools and community colleges, a strategic BI initiative may still be an elusive goal. But here's how schools with limited resources are making the dream a reality.
WHEN JANICE MILLER ATTENDS
higher education technology conferences,
peers from large universities tell her they
have five or six staff members assigned to a
business intelligence (BI) project team. "I
just have to laugh when I hear that," says the
Long Beach City College (CA) research
systems analyst. Truth is, Miller is the only
staff member assigned to BI implementation
at LBCC, a two-campus college with
29,000 mostly part-time students. "And
that's just part of my job description,"
emphasizes Miller, who works in the college's
Office of Institutional Effectiveness.
Yet, although LBCC leaders realize they have a fairly small budget and IT staff compared with some schools, that hasn't stopped them from thinking big. Starting in November 2006, with approximately $250,000 from a federal Title V grant plus its own district funds, the college has worked with BI consultancy Phytorion to build a data warehouse, develop web-based reporting tools, and train many campus business analysts to create their own reports.
"The data warehouse and reporting tools now automate tasks that used to take up people's valuable time," Miller explains. "Now those individuals are freed up to perform more creative tasks."
In fact, Miller contends that the new system already has resulted in significant revenue improvement. In their first year of using Cognos Enterprise Planning software to focus on trends in enrollment and better target their marketing campaigns, school administrators were able to increase the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) students by more than 800. LBCC may now be far ahead of the pack of small and midsize four-year schools and community colleges, in terms of making progress with business intelligence.
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