Campus innovation: building the intelligence enterprise

Today’s colleges and universities strive to bring the latest innovations to faculty, staff and students — equipping teachers, administrators and learners alike with the skills they need to compete in a global marketplace. With the advent of new technologies, institutions of higher learning increasingly use electronic means to support their operations, gathering mountains of data in the process.

E-learning, faculty and staff development, legislative mandates and a demand from the public to become more efficient and more effective are just some of the challenges college and university leaders are facing. From online registration to alumni portals, IT infrastructure and funding, campuses are seeking to exploit new technologies to enhance performance and services to achieve goals.

SAS, the market leader in business intelligence and data warehousing, creates and implements solutions tailored to meet the needs of today’s colleges and universities. Driven by the need to maintain their status as IT thought leaders, these institutions rely on SAS to turn volumes of data from any source and across every channel into usable knowledge.

Since 1976, SAS has delivered the latest technology to our higher education customers. Originally developed at North Carolina State University to analyse agricultural data, SAS remains true to its roots with a continuous commitment to excellence in the academic environment. Software and solutions from SAS are licensed and implemented in more than 3,400 educational institutions around the world. The coalition between higher education and SAS is a natural one. We have discovered that by joining forces with colleges and universities we can both work smarter and operate more effectively.

By analysing data held across an organisation and from external sources, SAS solutions enable organisations to monitor, review, improve and shape their performance. Using SAS, an organisation can develop and implement intelligence strategies, including:

• Higher Education Performance Management
• Strategic Enrolment Management
• Higher Education Financial Management
• Higher Education Human Capital Management
• Supplier Relationship Management

SAS Solutions for Higher Education

Higher Education Performance Management

Colleges and universities need to be able to demonstrate higher education’s value to students, alumni, industry, government and to the public. A realistic performance management strategy is essential —one that incorporates key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure effectiveness and communicate results to all stakeholders. SAS performance management helps organisations to communicate, collaborate, and focus on strategy from a single portal, that pinpoints organisational strengths and opportunities to improve.

Strategic Enrolment Management

Higher Education stakeholders — students, faculty, staff, administration, government legislatures, and business partners — increasingly expect information and services to be available quickly, easily and around the clock. SAS provides colleges and universities with the information they need to maximise efficiency, reduce red tape and save time and resources. With a 360-degree view of stakeholders, colleges and universities can:

• collect data from any source — at all stakeholder contact points, including the web.
• analyse that data to understand and predict needs, then use that analysis to provide the best services possible — without spending an inordinate amount of time, money or resources.
• disseminate internal information effectively and efficiently.

Higher Education Financial Management

SAS Financial Management solutions can help colleges and universities bring together financial information from a variety of systems across the institution, yielding comprehensive results on time. Our solution integrates data management and financial intelligence with the finest online analytical processing in the industry, allowing you to view your institution from any perspective: department, college, school, campus or any other category.

Higher Education Human Capital Management

Institutions of higher learning are facing critical workforce and demographic challenges. Among these challenges are complex legislative and regulatory initiatives, changes in workforce trends, increased demand for HR management skills and the need for greater accountability. SAS can help college and university HR managers have the ability to demonstrate HR’s contribution to the institution’s overall strategies through Web-based, HR-specific decision support, powerful analytics and comprehensive intelligence capabilities.

Supplier Relationship Management

Supplier Relationship Management helps higher education organisations to maintain the public’s trust while effectively administering many diverse procurement processes. SAS provides information that will allow procurement managers to select contractors who have a track record of successful performance or demonstrate superior abilities to perform. Managers will be able to track, conduct business with integrity, fairness and openness while promoting competition among suppliers, and minimise administrative operation costs.