Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- WebFOCUS Developer Studio
- Managed Reporting
- Open Portal Services
- ReportCaster
Tech Stack
- Oracle Database
- Linux
- SunGard Banner
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Digital Expertise
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Predictive Quality Analytics
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Friends University is an independent university located in Kansas, United States. The university offers both traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate programs. With a population of more than 3,000, Friends University is one of the first educational institutions in Kansas to offer flexible academic programs that accommodate full-time students as well as busy adults. While younger students typically enroll in traditional daytime classes, adult students can attend classes during the evening or weekends to complete their coursework for an associate, bachelors, or master’s degree. Rather than following a strict semester schedule, Friends’ cohort program lets students begin at any time during the year and move through the program in a group.
The Challenge
Friends University, an independent institution offering traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate programs, was facing a challenge in managing two distinct business models for traditional and non-traditional course schedules. The university was operating via two distinct business models, making the need for current, accurate information incredibly urgent. The IT department at Friends was struggling to meet administrators’ increasing demands for custom reports. The legacy reporting tool offered only rudimentary security and ad hoc query functionality, which meant most departments depended on IT to run their reports. The university reviewed BI packages from Argos, Oracle, Cognos, and Microsoft before selecting Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform.
The Solution
Information Builders stepped in to help the university meet these reporting and information management challenges in a consistent, economical way. The school now has a campus-wide business intelligence (BI) and reporting environment that extracts data from its enterprise software applications and delivers it to 400 active users throughout the institution. School administrators can report on everything from student enrollment to finance. Faculty members can review the history and performance of their students. And other staff members can track student enrollment, alumni activities, and class attendance. The staff also wanted to create a more effective user community by giving them parameterized reports and graphs to drill down into the data, such as to compare term students to non-term students over a given date range.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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