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CONCLUSIONS PAPER

Empowering Enterprise Decision Making How North Carolina State University Makes Data Available, Interconnected and Usable

Insights from a presentation made at the EDUCAUSE Enterprise IT Leadership Conference 2013

Featuring:

Marc Hoit, PhD Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and CIO at NC State

SAS Conclusions Paper

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Managing Data: A University Headache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Why SAS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Data, Data – Everywhere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The University Data Mart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The First Project: Graduate and Undergraduate Admissions . . . . . . . . 4

University Advancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Noncredit and Continuing Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Strategic Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Closing Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

About the Presenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

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Empowering Enterprise Decision Making

IntroductionThere’s an abundance of data in your university’s computing systems . And if you follow the lead of Marc Hoit, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and CIO at NC State, you might be able to quickly turn that data into something more – meaningful information .

Universities collect vast amounts and types of data – but it’s spread across different schools, departments and campuses in various formats and systems . It’s a massive challenge to make all that data available, connected and usable to everyone who needs it .

Like others who are part of what some call a “new breed” of CIOs, Hoit is working on a solution that will create a holistic view of diverse university data spanning departments, functions and activities . Because being able to access and analyze all that data – even if it seems unrelated – has big implications for students, educators and even entire educational systems .

The endeavor is a giant leap from the past, when CIOs were primarily responsible for managing hardware shops to keep systems up and running . Today, CIOs like Hoit fill an expanding role focused on promoting strategic decision making across the university enterprise .

Managing Data: A University HeadacheWhen Hoit started working at NC State several years ago, the university was like most others around the country: It was not managing data very effectively .

The university had many different layers of traditional systems for collecting and reporting information . There were separate systems for student information, faculty information, finance, human resources, facilities, advancement and grants – just to name a few . There was data related to state-mandated reports, system reports, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)1 and the US News & World Report rankings . In addition, the university collected data about student clubs, sports and other activities .

Maintaining multiple systems was a big hassle, said Hoit . The existing systems had built-in reporting, but the reports were confined to individual data silos . Hoit’s group wanted to link all the data and put it into usable formats for analysis and reporting – potentially transforming decision making across the university .

That’s when Hoit began looking for a new solution .

1 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved June, 2013 at nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

Being able to access and

analyze data – even data that

seems unrelated – has big

implications for students,

educators and even entire

educational systems.

http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

2


Why SAS?As he considered options, Hoit thought back to his work with NCB-Prepared,2 the North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative . Although he had used some SAS® products in the past, he had become familiar with the enterprise capabilities of SAS as NC State, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and SAS worked together in a public-private partnership on this homeland security project . Their goal was to develop a system to enable sophisticated reporting, insights and better decision making in response to emerging health threats .

Traditional health reporting processes, he explained, provide hospital, lab and discharge data . But these reports only show things that have already happened . By the time an organization receives the information, it’s sometimes too late to make a difference .

“We can do better than that,” Hoit recalled saying . They started with Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data from ambulance runs across the state of North Carolina . Each ambulance crew routinely reports information about their locations, patients and health complaints . The NCB-Prepared team thought getting access to that real-time data could help to mitigate health issues sooner .

The theory was sound . Using analytics, the team was able to predict an outbreak of norovirus three months earlier than with traditional processes . “We’ve consistently proven this over and over again with different diseases, different outbreaks and different types of things,” said Hoit .

Interestingly enough, he added, the EMS data that the NCB-Prepared team used was originally collected as a way to save gas and make ambulance runs more efficient . “It had nothing to do with patient care,” said Hoit . “Yet it tracks ER data 100 percent .”

Hoit’s experience illustrates the potential of tapping into existing data sources you might never have thought of before . If you can use existing data, Hoit added, you don’t have to search for new data and create additional work .

Data, Data – EverywhereClearly, university data is very different from EMS data . But the concept of developing data-based early warning systems applies to students as much as it does to patients . And, as Hoit pointed out, data that could trigger early warnings for students won’t necessarily be found in the standard places .

“We tend to use graduation dates, transfer dates, failing grades – we tend to look at things later on in college careers,” said Hoit . “What we want to do is to use social data, tweets and things that are being shared on Facebook – in addition to the standard information . We want to start moving earlier down that chain of getting information .”

2 See the National Collaborative for Bio-Preparedness: ncb-prepared.org/

“All the university leaders

want to talk to me about this,

because they all want the

same thing. They’d love to

be able to look at the grant

system compared to the

student system compared to

the faculty reporting system

– then integrate that data and

run queries to determine

productivity, student success,

all those types of things.”

Marc HoitVice Chancellor for Information Technology and CIO at NC State

http://ncb-prepared.org/

3


When Hoit shared his plans for the university, it seemed as if everyone was interested . All the university leaders wanted to be able to get data from systems they couldn’t readily access .

“All the university leaders want to talk to me about this, because they all want the same thing,” he said . “They’d love to be able to look at the grant system compared to the student system compared to the faculty reporting system – then integrate that data and run queries to determine productivity, student success, all those types of things .

“What I’m offering them is the ability to get data and information they’ve never seen before, and make those connections . They’re willing to work with me to accomplish that because of the potential results on the horizon .”

The University Data Mart“We made the decision to move completely to SAS,” explained Hoit . “I don’t need multiple systems to do the same things at different places in the university . I’d love to have just one – but that’s probably never going to happen . If I had two analytics reporting systems that worked in conjunction and talked to one another, I’d be thrilled . I don’t need a dozen .”

Hoit started a project dubbed the University Data Mart . “I didn’t call it a data warehouse,” he explained, “because data warehouse is an evil word in most places . I wanted something more nimble .”

Data Mart or Data Warehouse?

A data mart is a simple form of a data warehouse that is focused on a single subject or functional area, such as HR, finance or institutional research . Data marts are often built and controlled by a single department within an organization . Given their single-subject focus, data marts usually draw data from only a few sources . The sources could be internal operational systems, a central data warehouse or external data .

Hoit began the project by using SAS® Data Management to build small data marts for different areas . Each data mart has a specific function . Since all the data marts are in the same system, all the data they contain is integrated . SAS® Enterprise MinerTM handles predictive analytics and data mining, and reporting is done through the SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Suite for Education . This approach made it easy to build the solution in phases rather than rolling out everything at once .

“By creating the data mart and standardizing on SAS software, we have started to make our data available, interconnected and usable,” said Hoit . “Now, for the first time, we can see across the entire university – and start to find relationships among all types of different information .”

“What I’m offering them is

the ability to get data and

information they’ve never

seen before, and make those

connections. They’re willing to

work with me to accomplish

that because of the potential

results on the horizon.”


“If I had two analytics reporting

systems that worked in

conjunction and talked to one

another, I’d be thrilled. I don’t

need a dozen.”


4


Current Projects Using the SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Suite for Education

• Graduate and Undergraduate Admissions:

» Provides operational (transactional) and trend/summary/performance management reporting from the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions system .

• University Advancement:

» Provides operational (transactional) and trend/summary/performance management reporting (around 250 reports) from the Ellucian Advance system .

• Noncredit and Continuing Education:

» Provides marketing, membership and noncredit educational activity reporting from the Destiny One system .

• Strategic Planning:

» Enables leaders to visualize progress toward NC State’s strategic goals, based on data from various internal and external sources .

The First Project: Graduate and Undergraduate Admissions

The first project Hoit tackled was for graduate and undergraduate admissions . “Most of you are probably like us,” said Hoit . “We have to limit our admissions . Consider our computer science departments – they get up to 100 times the number of applicants they can accept . Matching the “admit” number is critical, and there’s an art to doing it .”

With SAS, the admissions team no longer has to rely on custom-developed solutions that can differ across units . Instead, they have shared access to the same information, with consistent definitions between groups . They can use SAS to create bar charts, click on what they want and then drill down into it . By looking at average GRE scores and the cohorts, they can narrow down the pool for admissions . Finally, they can review the statistics to narrow the pool again, and then cycle around until they derive an optimal “admit” pool .

University Advancement

As NC State prepared to enter a capital campaign, Hoit learned that the university’s advancement department reporting was limited and ineffective .

“There were 1,200 individual reports,” he explained . “Every time somebody wanted a piece of information, the department created a custom report for them . And every development officer had a different report .”

People insisted that they needed all these reports . But it turned out that many were very similar, containing just one or two different variables . It was a nightmare to change the reports, he explained, because of the way they were written . The old system didn’t allow for much flexibility .

“By creating the data mart and

standardizing on SAS tools, we

have started to make our data

available, interconnected and

usable. Now, for the first time,

we can see across the entire

university – and start to find

relationships among all types of

different information.”


5


Today, the data is run through the advancement system but is output through SAS Enterprise Intelligence Suite for Education . As a result, Hoit’s group has reduced the number of reports to fewer than 100 . This covers the key reports people need, with several different variables . “SAS provides us with more flexible reporting, which we just didn’t have before,” said Hoit .

Just as important, users are now more self-sufficient than they were in the past . For example, business users can change various parameters when they run reports – year of graduation, department, etc . And the more highly trained “power users” can write reports from scratch that they can share them others on the team .

What does this mean for the future? “Right now, finding potential donors is still a very manual process,” explained Hoit . “But as we start to link various types of data with what we have in our university databases, we will find ways to simplify the process of identifying donors – and we can make it less intensive for individuals . We’re starting down that path now .”

The sophisticated analytics – complete with complex reports and dashboards – will be done in SAS . The results will be sent to development officers who can use them to narrow down their starting lists, and then filter those lists with other criteria . The officers will be able to track different awards that students received, the clubs they were in, other student activities, things they’ve done after graduation – and that will help them to pull even better lists . Armed with all this information, development officers will be able to find and contact the people who are the most likely to donate .

“We recently found an alumnus we didn’t know who was the owner of a large company in Asia,” Hoit added . “This was a former student (and potential donor) who we hadn’t connected with since graduation . We believe there are more of those out there . Missing those is not a good thing .”

Noncredit and Continuing Education

At most universities, said Hoit, noncredit and continuing education groups develop their own systems . They do things their own way and collect their own money . It’s no different at NC State . With this in mind, he said, “We purchased a specialized university enterprise-class system for our continuing education group . Hopefully this will simplify and unify their records .”

It’s important to focus on this group, he added, because many students graduate or leave the university and then come back in through continuing education . Others take a continuing education class and then decide they want to enroll at the university .

“We want to be able to connect that data,” said Hoit . “We want to be able to see what makes students successful, who should be coming back to the university, what we should be doing to support them, and how it all relates . With SAS, we can .”

“SAS provides us with more

flexible reporting, which we just

didn’t have before.”


“We want to be able to see what

makes students successful,

who should be coming back to

the university, what we should

be doing to support them, and

how it all relates.”


6


Strategic Planning

NC State’s most recent strategic plan has just five simple tenets . From there, it identifies goals, strategies and implementation suggestions . It also includes metrics for measuring the goals .

The first goal of the strategic plan is to enhance student success .

To capture a view of student success, leaders need to see data such as one-year, four-year and six-year graduation rates, credit hours per student, enrollment demographics and graduation survey responses .

“We’re going to automate all of this by working with SAS,” said Hoit . “We’ll be able to provide scorecards for different units to help them understand how their program is doing and what their efficiencies are like . We want the data behind it to drive the decisions .

“We plan to start automating data collection and then start rolling it into reports,” said Hoit . He hopes to include expenditure data along with other measures . “We want to use that for program evaluation when the deans come to meet with the provost to talk about their programs, their goals for the next year, and their budgets .

“My goal is to have all of this available in real time, for all of the deans,” said Hoit . “Then they can track these things, see how they’re doing, and drill down into departments and programs – anytime they want . So they’ll be able to do better tracking, and they won’t be surprised [about costs] at the end of the year .”

From a strategic perspective, leaders want to see things like program and college statistics, as well as other things to help measure program efficiency . When budgets are tight, explained Hoit, you have to look at reducing some things and growing others – shifting funds, that is . But what types of metrics should you use? It took NC State an entire year to agree on that .

The perseverance paid off . The strategic implementation team created a peer comparison report, for example, that charts degree rates over the years and shows NC State’s PhD attainment in relation to other universities . “This is a chart we can show to the deans and the board of trustees, and they can say, ‘Aha, I see where we fit . I see what the issue is .’ The visual approach makes it much easier to communicate what you’re trying to do with success and what measures you’re examining .”

“My goal is to have all of this

available in real time, for all of

the deans. Then they can track

these things, see how they’re

doing, and drill down into

departments and programs –

anytime they want.”


“The visual approach makes it

much easier to communicate

what you’re trying to do with

success and what measures

you’re examining.”


7


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University of Florida

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ohio State University

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Purdue University-Main Campus

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Texas A & M University

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University of California-Davis

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Num

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of

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rees

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Peer PhDs Awarded in 2010

Figure 1: NC State peer comparison report, PhD degrees awarded.

As Hoit acknowledged, it can take many hours of discussions to choose parameters for measurements . Regardless of what you choose, he said, it’s most important to carefully define the parameters . “With the definition, we’ll show how we’re measuring,” he said . “If you, internally, want to use a slightly different measurement, here’s the data – go ahead and do it; slice and dice it the way you want . But this is what you’re being measured on . As long as it’s clearly defined, it’s not a matter of whether it’s the perfect measure .”

Lessons Learned From his experience in working with SAS, Hoit has good advice to share with other universities seeking to connect and use multiple data sources in ways that can reveal unexpected opportunities .

“SAS has some amazing capabilities and great ways to do things,” said Hoit . “Be sure to work with them to figure out how you want to do it and what tools you want to use – that is very, very important . You need to help them understand your goals and what you’re trying to do so they can help you figure out which is the right tool to use, and why .”

You’ll need to define your requirements carefully – with enough details, but not excessively . You have to find the right balance, he added .

8


And don’t slight yourself on budget or time . Remember that it’s hard for people to understand what they’re getting until they actually see it . So even though you may specify something in great detail and determine what measures to use, when it’s ready the client may say, “Oh, that doesn’t tell me what I want . I need to include this and this and this .” At that point, if you‘re out of budget or time – and it doesn’t meet their goals – you’ve got a problem .

Hoit referred to NC State’s advancement reports as an example . “We had to practically do forensics on those old reports to figure them out,” he said . “We had to rewrite them – nobody understood the analytics behind them . So we had to do a bunch of unexpected work just to understand what the old reports did, let alone try to figure out what was needed now .”

It’s also important to keep in mind that people love graphics and tabular data . But they also love to download it to their spreadsheets so they can do their own manipulations with the data . “We don’t care, except for sensitivity and privacy issues,” Hoit said . “My goal is to make this as open as possible, with the right security and privacy rights .”

Lessons Learned

• Specifyyourrequirementscarefullyandknowwhatyouwanttodowithyourdata before you start developing .

• TaketimetolearnabouttherichsuiteofsoftwarefromSASbeforeyou jump in .

• Choosethebesttooltomeeteachofyourreport’srequirements–otherwise,you will waste time and effort .

• Don’tunderestimatebudgetandtimerequirements–expecttheunexpected.

• Providedrill-downcapability–peoplelovehavingbothgraphicalandtabularinformation in the same report .

Closing Thoughts“SAS has been a great partner for NC State,” said Hoit . One reason is that SAS offers a broad portfolio of solutions for data management, business intelligence, predictive analytics and visual analytics .

“SAS is not the answer to every problem,” Hoit added . “But it is the foundation . It gives us the ability to have data marts, it lets us do reports and deep analytics and study things and run ad hoc queries . But it doesn’t replace the basic reporting that happens in your student system, or your transactional information . It’s like anything else we do – one piece doesn’t solve the whole problem . But it solves a large piece of the problem .”

The strength of SAS lies in its ability to unify diverse data, to simplify and to standardize . And to let you delve deeper into your data so you can make innovative connections and find answers to questions you might never have considered before .

9


“I’m a modeler,” said Hoit . “Not only do I want to be able to predict something, I want to be able to diagnose it, to go back and correct it, and get an earlier warning so I can correct it sooner, when it costs less . SAS makes this possible .”

The Rising Importance of Analytics – the Institute for Advanced Analytics

At the urging of business leaders, NC State now offers an intensive professional degree program that creates data scientists in just 11 months . The Institute for Advanced Analytics is one of the most innovative programs in the country . How impressed are business leaders? Each graduate receives an average of 10 job offers . Some companies have approached the entire graduating class (of about 30) and wanted to hire them all .

As you begin to connect information throughout your university, be sure to consider the rising importance of the data explosion, Hoit said . Think about the vast amounts of data generated by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the like . “Interestingly enough,” he said, “that data can help us . But we tend to forget about it . We tend to think about student records, financial data, faculty productivity, publications and all sorts of other things .

“I think it’s more than that . The potential value of big data is huge . I believe it will have a big impact on education .”

Although NC State is just getting started on its quest to employ analytics as a way to make better use of all its data, Hoit can imagine tremendous opportunities for the future . “We have to walk before we can run,” he said . “But look at the fun we can have if we keep going . We’re getting very excited about the possibilities .”

About the Presenter


Hoit began working as vice chancellor at NC State in Raleigh in September 2008 . Since then, he has worked to develop an IT governance structure strategic operating plan, and has launched a number of key foundational projects to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of IT on campus . At NC State, Hoit is a professor in the civil, construction and environmental engineering department . He received his bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and his master’s degree and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley . Hoit is the Co-Principal Investigator for the North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative (NCB-P), funded by the Department of Homeland Security . He previously worked at the University of Florida, where his positions included Interim CIO, Director of Student PeopleSoft Implementation, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Administration, and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering .

Learn more

Read more about SAS’ deep commitment to education, and find out how our rich suite of solutions helps educational institutions around the world use data and analytics to support strategic decision making: sas .com/highered

http://www.sas.com/industry/education/highered/index.html

About SASSAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market . Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 65,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster . Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW® . For more information on SAS® Business Analytics software and services, visit sas.com .

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