Data warehouse, business intelligence and institutional research : organizing campus data to facilitate strategic planning and daily operations

Data exists everywhere in a campus, from those housed in the enterprise system to information located in a departmental officer’s drawers. Too often it is difficult or impossible to find data when needed the most. And, at times, similar data must be collected and organized over and over again to facilitate different operational needs at different times. Worse yet, we run the risk of not making data available to people who could benefit most from access. With the establishment of a new Institution Research office, coupled with the library’s information organization know-how and IT’s expertise managing data and access to data, we created an information gateway where core data, statistics, campus wide surveys and KPIs reports are organized and readily available to all departments, providing easy and efficient data access to facilitate university operations