Aligning Business Intelligence Solutions to the Education Market (Technology Focus)

• Suggests what features institutions will find attractive in a BI solution
• Identifies the ‘must have’ functionality for BI solutions in the education market
• Discusses the pain points driving the uptake of BI in the education market

• Gain insight into what is driving education institutions to invest in a BI solution
• Understand what solution features and functionality will be most important to education institutions
• Structure product development cycles more effectively by understanding what BI features are most important to the education market

DATAMONITOR VIEW

CATALYST

SUMMARY

METHODOLOGY

ANALYSIS

The education market is poised for the rapid and pervasive adoption of BI solutions

Powerful environmental factors are driving the uptake of BI in the education market

The uptake of BI solutions will languish unless a number of key challenges are addressed

The infrastructure of a BI solution plays a key role in its ability to provide value

The data integration layer is the engine behind any BI solution

The importance of data quality is paramount

A robust "Business intelligence Platform" enables institutions to have scalability and flexibility

Education institutions are keenly attuned to the security of their data

End users realize the value of BI from the tools in the web-based service delivery layer

Reporting and analytics provide different kinds of value to institutions

Visualization tools must be meaningful in order to be useful to education institutions

Institutions are not monolithic and departments will vary in their demands of a BI solution

Institutions are comprised of multiple, semi-autonomous departments

Education institutions are keen to find one version of the truth across all departments

Actionable intelligence on the effectiveness of departmental practices and processes is invaluable

The success of a BI solution hinges on its accessibility to the institutional end user

A wide variety of potential BI users at education institutions must be supported

Executives use BI to inform institutional policy

A sub-set of power users create the majority of reports

Departmental leaders use BI to track performance on strategic objectives

BI is a source of day-to-day information for tactical users

Institutional end users require ubiquitous access to their BI solution

ACTIONS

Institutions need solutions to pain points far more than they need transactional reports

Vendors must see their solutions through the eyes of education institutions

Solution flexibility will empower institutions to grow into their BI application over time

APPENDIX

Definitions

Extended methodology

Further reading

Ask the analyst

List of Tables

Table 1: Education institutions support a diverse set of business units

Table 2: There are different categories of BI users in education institutions

List of Figures

Figure 1: The infrastructure is critical to a BI solution's effectiveness

Figure 2: BI solutions must support a matrix of roles and departments

Figure 3: Education institutions are moving beyond transactional reporting to true BI