The Rise of thePurple People!

Curt ShermanDirector of Strategic Enrollment Initiatives and Research

Concordia University, Nebraska

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• Private, coeducational institution

• Founded in 1894 by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

• 1,150 traditional undergrads and 600+ graduate students

• $30 million annual budget / $35 million endowment / Tuition-driven!

• Part of the Concordia University System (10 institutions across the US)

• Mission statement:

Concordia University, Nebraska is an excellent academic and Christ-centered community

equipping men and women for lives of learning, service and leadership in the church and

world.

• Located in Seward, Nebraska (pop. 6,964)

Concordia University, Nebraska

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Our mission and central location enable us to draw students from 43 states.

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In many institutions there is wall that separates these two important groups!

Own the data and understand its use in making

business decisions

Own and maintain the hardware and software

infrastructure

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Purple people (and products) to

the rescue????

What can be done?

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Color purple is formed by mixing two primary colors: red and blue

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Tear down this wall!

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Where do you fit on the scale?

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CUNE Background

• Banner (SIS), Blackboard Learn (LMS)

• Discoverer and Access for reporting (because they were free!)

• Computing Services has 8 employees

• Handful of data “power users” across the administrative offices

• Power users can build reports but are dependent on IT to build underlying views and complicated reports

• Computing Services is continually backlogged with projects (hardware/software and reporting)

• Administration is always asking for more data!

• Halfway through a five-year strategic plan

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Curt’s Background

• CPA

• Worked in public and private accounting before joining CUNE in 2004.

• Change job titles every other year or so!• Controller

• Director of Admissions & Enrollment Management

• Director of Risk Management

• Director of Student Financial Services

• Director of Investments

• At a small university you wear many hats!

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Can you relate?

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Something Had to Change!

• Summer 2011, I sent a proposal to the president and VP of Finance for realignment of my job responsibilities

• My concerns:• Our vision has not been translated into strategies that are

measurable

• Which results in an “Execution Gap” – term used by Steven Covey that refers to the gap between setting a goal and actually achieving it• faculty/staff do not have a clear understanding of what CUNE is

trying to achieve in its vision; therefore,

• they do not have a clear line of sight between their tasks and achieving the vision

• Even if we had clear measurables, we do not have a good infrastructure in place that would allow us to measure!

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Proposed Solutions to Our Strategic Information Problem

• Realignment of my job duties• Take away most of my day-to-day operational duties

• Oversight of the SFS office (student accounts and FA)

• Student/family financial consulting

• Financial aid awarding oversight

• Explore business intelligence tools

• Change my job title again!

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Director of Strategic Enrollment Initiatives and Research

• Support the VP’s of Finance and Enrollment Management in the development and implementation of strategic initiatives and research in the areas of financial aid and EM• Financial aid leveraging, predictive modeling, CRM

• Responsible for establishing and maintaining a culture of data-driven decision making

• Collaborate with the Strategic Planning Management Team to identify measurable metrics

• No direct reports!

• Project leader of the Strategic Information Team

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Strategic Information Team (SIT)Purple People to the Rescue!

• Came out of our strategic planning process

• Strategic plan called for the implementation of Action Plans informed by reliable research

• SIT is made up of a select group of faculty and staff who are gifted with the ability to think clearly about data and statistics• 4 admin (business, registrar, advancement and myself)

• 2 co-deans of computing services

• 3 faculty (volunteers)

• Several staff already had their job duties changed to allow for more focus on systems and data

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Purple People to the Rescue!Strategic Information Team (SIT)

• Long-term, multi-year vision:• create a single authoritative source for university data,

reporting standards and guide process improvement

• provide users across campus with the reporting and analytical tools that will allow them to have a clear line of sight between their tasks and achieving the university’s mission and vision

• serve as a resource for both the academic and administrative areas

• Main purpose: to provide the university with strategic information that will help facilitate the fulfillment of its mission and vision

• Reports directly to the president’s cabinet

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Why a Strategic Information Team?

• Administration is getting tired of hearing that accurate information is not readily available

• Primary hurdles preventing us from overcoming these data integrity issues:• overwhelming nature of the issues

• existing high workload that is prevalent across campus

• Existence of homegrown “datamarts” and differing definitions

• Institutional research / accreditation needs

• Increase collaboration

• No budget to hire new people or create a new department

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Plenty of Examples Out There of Strategic Teams

• Many different team names:• Institutional reporting, data, business intelligence, decision

support, strategic management, research and strategic planning

• Here are few examples:• University of Buffalo: Strategic Information Reporting

Initiative

• University of the Sunshine Coast: Strategic Information and Analysis Unit

• St. Scholastica: Institutional Reporting Committee

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Purple Products to the Rescue!Blackboard Analytics

• Business Intelligence tools help bridge the gap between business and IT

• Chose Blackboard Analytics because we simply do not have the internal resources to build our own data warehouse (even if we thought that was a good idea!)

• Gives us a mature DW that allows us to “buy and build”

• Puts useable data in front of users more quickly

• Shifts the focus of IT to higher-level work rather than providing reports

• Also implementing Evision’s Argos for transactional reporting

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Purple Products to the Rescue!Blackboard Analytics

Select * fromSource.PS_STDNT_CAR_TERM stdnt_car_term inner join Student.DimTerm dim_term on

stdnt_car_term.STRM = dim_term.SourceKey and dim_term.IncludeTermInLoad = 1

left join Source.PS_ACAD_PROG acad_prog on stdnt_car_term.EMPLID = acad_prog.EMPLID and

stdnt_car_term.ACAD_CAREER = acad_prog.ACAD_CAREER and stdnt_car_term.STDNT_CAR_NBR = acad_prog.STDNT_CAR_NBR

and acad_prog.EFFDT <= dim_term.TermEndDate and

not exists (select 1 from Source.PS_ACAD_PROG acad_prog2 where acad_prog.EMPLID = acad_prog2.EMPLID and acad_prog.ACAD_CAREER = acad_prog2.ACAD_CAREER and acad_prog.STDNT_CAR_NBR = acad_prog2.STDNT_CAR_NBR

and acad_prog2.EFFDT <= dim_term.TermEndDate and

((acad_prog.EFFDT < acad_prog2.EFFDT) or (acad_prog.EFFDT = acad_prog2.EFFDT and acad_prog.EFFSEQ < acad_prog2.EFFSEQ)))

We don’t want end users to have to worry about this!

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Purple Products to the Rescue!Blackboard Analytics

End users focus on the frontend

IT focuses on the backend

Purple people focus on bringing it

all together!

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Matching the Right Tool to the Person/NeedU

ser S

ophi

stica

tion

Requ

ired

Enterprise Reporting:-Dashboards-Parameterized Reports

• New requirements = new reports

• Not well suited for analysis

……

•Self Service Analysis• Interactive Data

Exploration

Ad Hoc Query & Analysis

• Analysis from scratch: Open a tool Connect to a database

Number of Users

Information Delivery Roles

SpecialistTools

(Statistical, Predictive,

Data Mining)

Purple People

TechnicalSpecialists

Information Consumers

Developers/Tech Experts

Institutional Information

Assets

Analysts(Power Users)

Blackboard Analytics Implementation Process

1. Install

• Orientation• Research• Data Model

Validation• Functional

Change Specification

• Technical Change Specification

• Final Configuration• Technical Training• Data Validation

• Executive Leadership• End User Support• Link to Decision

Processes• Enhance/Refine

2. Assess

3. Refine

4. Deploy

• Develop Initial Report/Dashboard Portfolio

• Define and Configure Security

• Train End Users

5. Drive Adoption

• Planning• Infrastructure

Prep• Baseline

Installation

We are here

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Next Steps and Mea Culpa!• Ongoing project team member orientation of reporting tool

• Final reconciliation of DW dimensions and measures• CUNE customized dims

• Coding of major sub-populations in Banner

• Better understanding of DW structure

• Begin weekly project team meetings and identify key reports that each member is expected to complete using Blackboard Analytics

• Develop dashboards and begin deployment out to the user community

• Startup Strategic Information Team (yes, I bragged about the SIT but

we haven’t even began meeting yet!)

• Conduct a holistic needs assessment for drivers of the BI tools and map out the long-term plan (most important step and needs

to be done before all of the above!!!)

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From Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, by Tom Davenport

The Work Never Stops!

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Purple People Characteristics

• Understands the business issues and the data that is needed to make decisions

• Comfortable working in both the business and technological environments

• Can speak the language on both sides and translate it to each other

• Homegrown vs. hiring (it depends on your institution but it will probably be both)

• Business Intelligence needs purple people to succeed!!!

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What are your institutional needs?

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Resources

• Articles:• “Purple People”: The Key to BI Success, by Wayne

Eckerson of TDWI

• The Three Legged Stool – Business, Analytics, IT, blog by James Taylor on smartdatacollective.com

• The Business vs. IT – Tear Down This Wall, blog by Jim Harris on smartdatacollective.com

• Google key words

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Thank You!

Curt Sherman

Director of Strategic Enrollment Initiatives and Research

Concordia University, Nebraska

curt.sherman@cune.edu

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