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The ChallengeLoyola needed analytic tools that could simultaneously access Oracle, Lawson, and other data formats; convert more than 800 financial reports created with Crystal Reports to a more modern, interactive format.

The StrategyEvolve sophisticated InfoApps that visualize data through interactive charts and graphs. Promote BI tools that make it easy to sort, summarize, filter, and display data based on pre-selected variables, and to visualize that data in a variety of formats.

ResultsPeople use WebFOCUS to study financial trends, student retention, graduation rates, recruiting statistics, teaching loads, student debt, and more.

Information Builders SolutionWebFOCUS Developer Studio, InfoDiscovery, Portal, Visual Discovery, Active Reports, InfoAssist+, ReportCaster, AppStudio; Educational and Professional Services.

Loyola University Boosts Academic Ranking and Boosts Student Retention With WebFOCUSPervasive Analytics Tools Help Faculty and Staff Maximize Educational Experience

Loyola University Chicago has standardized on Information Builders’ WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform to access, analyze, and share insights among its 4,000-member faculty and staff.

With four campuses spread throughout the greater Chicago area, Loyola University Chicago is the nation’s largest Jesuit University. The liberal arts college has a 14:1 student/faculty ratio and a total enrollment of 16,400 students. U.S. News and World Report has consistently ranked Loyola among the top national universities.

Loyola University maintains its prestigious ranking by keeping administrative costs down, aligning administrative and academic initiatives, and streamlining business processes in accounting, admissions, enrollment, financial aid, registration, and academics. WebFOCUS delivers accurate information for these processes.

For example, university officials might notice that student grades tend to drop for a certain subject during the first semester of the junior year, or that GPAs are significantly higher for a particular class. This leads to additional inquiries. What did the university do that year to recruit that class? What attributes do those students have that makes them so successful? Did these students come from a particular region? Were they discovered by a certain recruiter?

WebFOCUS iWay Software Omni

Customer Profile

OrganizationFounded in 1870, Loyola University Chicago is the nation’s largest Jesuit University, with four major campuses and about 16,400 students.

Loyola University Chicago

Customer Profile

Loyola University Chicago receives real-time reports for information such as class enrollments through its WebFOCUS analytics tools.

“We tend to raise more questions than we can answer, but thanks to WebFOCUS data visualization capabilities, we now have the tools to investigate further, extrapolate knowledgeably, and detect anomalies in ways that we could not easily do before,” says Conrad Vanek, senior data architect at Loyola University. “There are now more than 1,000 WebFOCUS users on campus who collectively utilize several thousand WebFOCUS reports.”

Combining Information to Yield KnowledgeLoyola’s first major BI project required linking data from several sources: student data from a PeopleSoft for Education application, financial data from a Lawson Financial Management application; a Sakai grading scale application; and proprietary information from the university’s Library, Housing, and Admissions databases. Loyola had an aggressive schedule for deploying the PeopleSoft for Education system, and the IT team needed analytics tools that could simultaneously access Oracle, Lawson, and other data formats.

Information Builders’ Professional Services helped Loyola convert more than 800 financial reports, created with Crystal Reports, to a much smaller number of WebFOCUS analytics applications and reports by using parameterization, bursting, and reporting templates to establish a more efficient financial reporting environment. They also helped Loyola use an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to populate these reports and demonstrated how analysts could use WebFOCUS AppStudio to visualize warehouse data quickly and easily. “Our Graduation Audit reports used to take well over an hour,” recalls Vanek. “Because of the efficient way we’ve organized the data, they take 30 seconds. AppStudio is now our BI standard.”

Other reports draw information from the university’s PeopleSoft and Lawson applications, both of which store information in an Oracle database. “WebFOCUS can attach to anything, so it is easy to incorporate different data sources securely,” adds Vanek. “We have hundreds of student financial reports, most developed by our user community across several departments. We often use WebFOCUS ReportCaster to deliver this information to their inboxes.”

Responding to Academic and Administrative Needs The university continues to develop WebFOCUS reports and InfoApps™ in response to a wide range of academic and administrative needs. Several major analytics initiatives are underway based on the university’s philosophy of data visualization.

For example, a student retention application helps to identify factors that could reduce dropouts and boost graduation rates. By delving into data from the institution’s research area, staff identify students who are not doing well and try to isolate the contributing factors. “A student who frequently visits our health services clinic may have an illness impacting his or her work,” says Vanek. “The better we understand the struggles our students might be experiencing, the more proactively we can intervene to help them succeed, while keeping our retention rates high.”

The new EDW makes it easier for users to access PeopleSoft student data, significantly improving the student enrollment process via an InfoApp™ that reveals information on class enrollment as it happens. “Having near real-time data helps advisors, deans, professors, and students understand the availability of classes,” explains Vanek. “A heat map shows them the range of sections filling up, indicating the need to open additional sections or even hire another professor.”

“Our Graduation Audit reports used to take well over an hour. Because of the efficient way we’ve organized the data, they take 30 seconds. AppStudio is now our BI standard.”

Conrad VanekSenior Data ArchitectLoyola University

Customer Profile

Find Out MoreWe can help you succeed. Talk to your local Information Builders representative to learn how. Visit us at informationbuilders.com, e-mail askinfo@informationbuilders.com, or call (800) 969-4636 in the U.S. and Canada. To improve your skills, visit education.ibi.com.

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Another WebFOCUS application focuses on faculty instructional activity, enabling the president, provost, deans, advisors, and faculty chairs to monitor the teaching load across locations and time periods, make more accurate projections, and detect shortfalls in certain subjects and majors. It also helps divide the workload in ways that benefit students. Loyola wants to ensure that professors and full-time faculty are teaching enough of the core courses, as opposed to having part-time and assistant faculty handling these classes. WebFOCUS helps with all of these inquiries by making it easy to sort, summarize, filter, and visualize student data based on pre-selected variables.

Vanek and his team have also created analytics apps for the registrar’s office. These parameterized displays, which mostly use student data, make it easy to sort selected information by student, GPA, major, hours, school, and other variables.

One of Vanek’s goals is to use parameterization in conjunction with the new EDW to cut down on the total number of reports in use by the University. WebFOCUS lends itself to this consolidation exercise, he maintains, with its web-based architecture and innovative techniques for guided self-service analytics. “These techniques empower faculty and staff members to access information, without requiring them to become BI experts,” says Vanek. He intends to use WebFOCUS Active Technologies to extend interactive analytics reports throughout the university, along with WebFOCUS InfoAssist+ for ad hoc reporting. “InfoAssist+ will be a great middle ground for business users who want to take analytics into their own hands, since it makes it easy to identify a data set, define the fields, standardize the terminology, and select parameters,” he adds.

“The support we’ve received from Information Builders over the years has been tremendous,” says Vanek. “At one point we logged more than 40 tickets, and each time their response was immediate. They always have answers when we need them, and they are quick to expedite issues as they arise.”

Mobile BI for the Student Population All new reports and InfoApps™ leverage responsive design techniques so they can be rendered properly on smartphones and tablets. This makes it easy for students to view the course catalog, review class schedules, and interact with all facets of university life. “We want to make university information as accessible as possible,” Vanek notes. “More of our users rely on mobile devices, so leveraging the mobile capabilities of WebFOCUS is a logical way to present the data.”

Loyola plans to mobile-enable other InfoApps™ and reports in the future, and to continue to work closely with Information Builders to extend BI capabilities to other campus domains. Their robust analytics foundation, anchored by WebFOCUS, gives them the opportunity to recruit the highest-quality students to improve retention rates and grow their overall ranking among institutions of higher education.

Customer Profile

“We tend to raise more ques-tions than we can answer, but thanks to WebFOCUS data visualization capabil-ities, we now have the tools to investigate further, extrapolate knowledgeably, and detect anomalies in ways that we could not easily do before.”

Conrad VanekSenior Data ArchitectLoyola University