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Macquarie University generates new insights with Business Intelligence

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Macquarie University today launched the first phase of a university-
wide reporting and analytics program, Datamart.

Datamart, powered by Yellowfin’s Business Intelligence (BI) solution,
delivers self-service data analysis to Macquarie University academic
and business decision-makers anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Macquarie University, based in Sydney’s northwestern high-tech
corridor, seeks to surface deep insight into its wide range of
operational data, used to support the strategic direction of the
university.

“Macquarie has a strategic goal – to be one of the top 200
universities in world rankings by 2014, and to be one of the top eight
research universities in Australia,” said Macquarie University Chief
Information Officer (CIO), Marc Bailey.  “To get there, we need to
understand how we’re performing.  To achieve that, we need great
data.  Actually we have the data, but we weren’t able to surface it.
Now Datamart, with Yellowfin technology underpinning it, provides us
capability to expose that data and leverage it.”

Bailey said that implementing a BI rollout, in an era of greater
competition due to the uncapping of student places, would give
Macquarie a significant advantage over other higher education
providers.  He explained that university rankings and research funding
were heavily dependent on the type of data submitted to government and
regulatory bodies. Bailey also said that Yellowfin would allow
Macquarie to improve the quality of teaching and student services
based on the analysis of student and survey data.

“Data is a competitive issue for universities.  Universities are
engines of data, producing endless amounts of statistics and numbers
everyday.  We’ve both a capacity to produce it, and a thirst to
consume it.  When you’re trying to compare and assess the performance
of organizations in the private sector, you’ve got dollars and
shareholder value as the ultimate bottom line.  When you’re trying to
compare the performance of a university, you have data as a bottom
line.   So good data that points in the right strategic direction can
help you understand how you’re doing compared to another institution.
If you can deliver that data with high veracity and faster timeliness
then you’ve got a competitive edge. That’s exactly what Datamart is
doing for Macquarie.”

Macquarie University currently has three key data sets available for
Yellowfin to report from – student data, research data and Australian
graduate survey data.

“These are data sets that universities throughout Australia use to
report to the government regulators to explain or justify performance,
which are directly linked to funding and to student experience,” said
Bailey.  “These are three of the most critical data sets for
government reporting and for providing the people at Macquarie with
the information they need to offer the best services possible and
develop winning research, teaching and business strategies.”

Bailey said that as a university, with many people, located in many
different places, all using different technologies to access
information, Yellowfin’s multi-platform, multi-device self-service
capabilities were paramount.

“Widespread self-service access to reporting and analytics is vital
for our success as a university, and Yellowfin delivers that.”

Bailey also said that Yellowfin offered the features necessary to
accomplish Macquarie’s goal of “democratizing data.”

“When we looked at Yellowfin, we saw something simpler than the
alternatives.  It’s highly intuitive and 100 percent Web-based, so
it’s easier to consume, but without compromise.  Ease of use is
crucial.  The second thing that we saw as a major benefit was the fact
that Yellowfin is one of the only BI products on the market with the
ability to utilize HTML 5, and therefore receive information on any
device or platform – Windows, Linux or Mac; iPad, iPhone or Android –
it doesn’t matter.”

According to Macquarie University’s Information Director, Dr Neil
Fraser, using Yellowfin to collate, analyze and report on the
university’s different data sources, will remove the reliance on
spreadsheets, eliminating inconsistencies in organizational data, the
uncertainty surrounding data accuracy, and uncover new opportunities.

“Yellowfin gives us a common frame of reference,” said Fraser.
“Everyone is receiving the same information from the same source,
analyzed in the same way.  Establishing a single source of truth for
data within a university is a significant accomplishment, given the
complexity and diversity of operations.  By breaking-down
departmentalized information stores, Macquarie will be able to
understand its operations like never before.

“We can now accurately map where our students are coming from and
develop effective marketing strategies accordingly.  For example we
can monitor student intake around the world or traffic flow around the
campus. We can even analyze where our funding comes from based on
locality – the opportunities are limitless.  Yellowfin’s geospatial
intelligence technology uncovers questions, answers and opportunities
at a micro level and at a macro level.  Being able to visualize our
data is key to discovering these types of problems and opportunities.”

Yellowfin will be progressively rolled-out to a wider population,
eventually offering most staff and even students access to a wide
range of operational university data, subject to security.

To watch a short video about Datamart, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMty3kLiUaM

To watch a video interview regarding the Datamart implementation with
Macquarie University Chief Information Officer (CIO), Marc Bailey,
visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td6If7nvykE

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Macquarie University generates new insights with Business Intelligence janpelletier@yahoo.ca - 2011-05-18 05:04 -0700

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