Data Warehouse & Analytics Planning Project

Overview

The Office of Institutional Research (now DAIR) and Division of Information Technology (IT) collaborated to create an enterprise data store, or a data warehouse. The purpose of the Enterprise Data Project is to provide a modern business intelligence and analytics solution and services to K-State for our 150 departments and offices in nine academic colleges on three campuses. The goal is to create a plan, strategy, and timeline focused on identifying potential solutions and services to support leveraging expansive data sets for critical decision-making and predictive analytics.

The Plante Moran consulting firm has been contracted to identify solutions and services to meet K-State's unique needs. Plante Moran will assist K-State with the following objectives:

• Enable an information-driven organization that utilizes analytics and business intelligence for strategic decisions.
• Increase consistency and accuracy of data and information through coordination and controls.
• Establish oversight, administration, and governance for the University community.
• Streamline data interfaces and integrations across multiple systems, including student, financial, and employee.
• Unify data sources and provide a secure environment for business intelligence and analytics.
• Visualize large amounts of complex data to identify trends and patterns quickly.
• Consider future opportunities for artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The outcome of this project is to create a plan to build a data analytics program that aligns with K-State's strategic and organizational goals. The plan will serve as a roadmap that aligns with current and future market and technology trends.

Timeline

Data Collection

January - February 2021

Assessment & Findings

March - April 2021

Report and Recommendations

May - June 2021

Listening Sessions

Listening Sessions are teleconference-based workshops with data analytics stakeholders to better understand the data analytics challenges they face, gain insight into what is needed in the future environment, and view current challenges. A pre-assessment survey will be sent to data analytics stakeholders to provide insights on topics to be discussed during the listening sessions.

Assessment & Recommendations

Plante Moran has compiled and shared their current assessment, and emerging recommendations of K-State's Data Analytics needs. The findings have been shared with the President's Cabinet and Dean's Council. The plan will work as a roadmap that aligns with current and future market and technology trends. In the coming weeks, the University Data Governance Committee will provide details about the next steps to build a data analytics program.