Informer Case Study: Carson-Newman College

Challenge: Provide real-time data access campus-wide

Greg Bailey and his staff at Carson-Newman College are responsible for, among other things, the day-to-day operation of the campus wide ERP implementation of Datatel – a software package designed to manage universities and community colleges, including everything from student enrollment, financial aid, and marketing operations. Essentially the backbone of the University insofar as software is concerned.

Datatel is a relatively new package for Carson-Newman, having only completed the rollout campus wide in 2004. Prior to the rollover, Greg and his staff relied on a heavily modified legacy reporting system to retrieve data from their previous system. But with a new state-of-the-art back office installed campus wide, Carson-Newman quickly realised the need for a strong reporting environment to complement it. They entered the marketplace seeking a cost-effective solution supporting their multi-value UniData database.

Solution: Implement Informer Web Reporting

Ultimately, The IT staff at Carson-Newman needed to provide a gateway to operational information for their end-users. To be successful, they required a system easy to maintain, intuitive for end users, secure, fast, powerful, and most importantly, cost-effective. After reviewing available options, Greg and his staff chose Informer Web Reporting.

Results: Intuitive, personalised view into administrative data

Within a week of purchase, Carson-Newman deliverered critical reports to end-users and trained report consumers to create and modify their own reports. A customer of Entrinsik since only the summer of 2005, Carson-Newman operational staff now bases much of their daily operations on Informer functionality, relying both on standard features such as report scheduling as well as new-found creative ways of manipulating Informer reports, such as automating call-lists to their Telecommunications counselors.

Informer has been the best investment we've made since we converted our administrative software to a UniData platform. With its easy, web-based, real-time, point and click interface, Informer delivers a powerful reporting solution that is affordable and would be almost impossible to be without now.

- Kevin Houk, Application Systems Analyst, Carson-Newman College

Informer User Profile: Gail Green

As Director of Institutional Research at Carson-Newman College, Gail Greene is responsible for analysing institutional data to support institutional effectiveness related to the intended educational, research, and service outcomes and administrative objectives established by the institution. Daily reports delivered and executed from Informer help her better perform her duties, and afford her a clean view into the daily changes within the college.

Informer provides her the pre-registration and actual registration numbers for Carson-Newman each semester. One of the many reports she's authored since her Informer training is a weekly scheduled Admissions report detailing the number of students who have either applied, accepted, or actually made a deposit for the coming semester - linking fields from multiple files to generate the resulting report. This report, which compares data to the previous year, is delivered to the College President and the VP of Admissions who are then free to personalise their view. And given the friendly descriptions provided by the Informer Meta File, they need not know the UniData expression for a given data element, but instead everything is presented with friendly, English language descriptions for the properties available.

Informer User Profile: Phil Barger

Phil Barger works in the Admissions office and is responsible for any modifications needed to the ERP system as required by Admissions staff as well as providing access to constantly changing data important to Admissions operations, such as updated applicant listings, accept listings, etc.

As the primary Informer user in the department, Phil often fulfills requests from colleagues to assist in authoring or delivering their own reports, and also executes various reports every few days to keep up with cumulative data required of the Admissions staff. He describes Informer's ease of use and it's functionality to create and edit personal reports as key features, using the ability to create a personal report from scratch several times a day to have a clear look into the Admissions data in his system.

Situation

a powerful reporting solution that is affordable and would be almost impossible to be without now.

Carson-Newman, a four-year college with an enrollment of 2,200 students needed to deploy a Reporting Solution to support their new back office implementation of Datatel, an ERP system built on UniData designed to manage campus operational needs.

IT Staff required a Reporting Solution able to satisfy and exceed the needs and expectations of eventual report consumers - one providing fast, secure access to real-time information.

Success

IT installed and deployed Informer within days of purchase, and began campus-wide rollout in the summer of ‘05. Individual departments trained power-users to assist implementation, minimising time required of technical staff to assist in authoring reports and training end-users. Carson-Newman continues to find ways Informer can help get data into the hands of decision makers in a format they can understand.

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