Later this month SunGard Higher Education (SGHE) will have their annual conference or “Summit” in New Orleans, LA (March 20-23). I’m very much looking forward to this Summit for a couple of reasons. First we, that is the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) will be presenting our Open Business Intelligence (BI) Initiative. We’re calling it “open” because we don’t anticipate it will ever be completed and we want anyone in our system who shares our interest and passion in measuring institutional effectiveness to join us in this initiative. My second and more important motivation for attending though is that we want to float a trial balloon of exploring with institutions outside of the TBR their interest in joining the initiative as well.
The old business school adage “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” is the fundamental driver for this project. Its intent is to continually deliver to the executive and management levels of all functional areas across multiple institutions in the TBR enterprise the tools necessary to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of their particular area(s) of responsibility. It was derived out of a consulting engagement that identified more than 200 key performance indicators (KPIs) that crossed over 19 discrete functional areas, and is being built out of SunGard Higher Education’s Banner® ERP system and their operational data store (ODS).
We’re using a shared collaborative approach where colleagues from multiple colleges and universities (six as of this date) are involved in the development of the KPIs that have been identified in the $200K consulting engagement for the project. Since estimates for a consultant lead effort to build out the KPIs have ranged from $400K - $500K, those who join in the initiative will eventually benefit from a project that would conservatively cost any single institution somewhere in the neighborhood of $600K - $700K.
So … the purpose of this blog is to try to gauge interest in and perhaps attract/recruit additional institutions both in and outside of the TBR to participate in this Open BI project. Additional talent and new perspectives can only increase the quality and quantity of valuable metrics that can be utilized by all institutions who participate to improve the effectiveness of their institution. Initially, the thought is that participation would only require a commitment by an institution to building out at least 5 KPIs. Some briefing/background materials on the project can be found at: http://bit.ly/i9UUUc
If you will be attending the Summit please meet with our project lead on March 23rd at 11:00 AM when she will present “Tennessee Board of Regents Business Intelligence Initiative (5010).” If you cannot attend but are still interested in learning more please contact me and we can perhaps arrange a phone call or even a webinar for after the Summit. We look forward to providing you additional information and an opportunity to convince you to join us!
