Case Studies > Largest Community College in North Carolina Creates a Self-Service Reporting Environment with Informer

Largest Community College in North Carolina Creates a Self-Service Reporting Environment with Informer

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Informer
Datatel

Tech Stack

Web-based Interface
Drag and Drop

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Remote Asset Management

Services

System Integration
Training

About The Customer

Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) is the largest community college in North Carolina, offering nearly 300 degree and certification programs. The college also provides customized corporate training, market-focused continuing education, and special interest classes. CPCC had been using Query Builder to run queries against data within their Datatel® database. The IT department was responsible for creating the majority of these reports and delivering them to end users. The reporting process was inefficient, with reports stored in multiple locations and a significant amount of time spent modifying existing reports. CPCC needed a more efficient and secure reporting solution to allow users to create and modify their own reports.

The Challenge

Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) faced significant challenges with their existing reporting process. The IT department was primarily responsible for creating and delivering reports, which led to redundancy and inefficiency. Reports were stored in multiple locations, making it difficult to track and maintain them. Additionally, modifying existing reports to add or change fields was time-consuming, slowing down decision-making processes. The previous reporting solution lacked the necessary security features to extend access to the majority of users, creating a bottleneck in report generation and modification. CPCC needed a solution that would allow users to run or modify their own reports without overloading the IT department with requests.

The Solution

CPCC selected Informer as their new reporting solution after viewing demos of various options on the market. Informer provided an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop web-based interface that allowed users to customize reports and perform real-time, ad-hoc analysis of school data. The implementation of Informer was straightforward, and the IT department rolled it out by department, converting existing reports and setting up necessary file mappings and security configurations. Users were trained on how to create and modify Informer reports, making future report creation much easier. Informer enabled CPCC to configure security down to the data element, allowing them to extend reporting access to a broader range of users while maintaining control over data access.

Operational Impact

The majority of the college is now self-sufficient in creating, modifying, and delivering reports, reducing the workload on the IT department.
The implementation of Informer has led to significant cost, time, and workload savings for the IT department and increased productivity for other departments.
The intuitive, point-and-click interface of Informer has made it easy for users to create their own reports, saving them a great deal of time.
Informer has become the primary reporting solution at CPCC, with reports being used in various college functions, including creating exports for bank files, the bookstore, and the Operational Data Store.
The ability to configure security down to the data element has allowed CPCC to extend reporting access to a broader range of users, improving overall data management and security.

Quantitative Benefit