Business Intelligence
at Indiana University

• BI Foundational Projects
  • Completed 65 conformed dimensions, available for reuse, and shared across existing IU projects
  • Completed the schedule of classes data model design
  • Defined BI Standards working group objectives, timelines, staffing and deliverables
• BI Functional Projects
  • Delivered Enrollment Management Project prototype
  • Defined Account Manager Project requirements and deliverables
• BI Tool Review
  • Delivered Microsoft BI tools demonstration and presentation
  • Established the SQL Server environment for tool evaluation
• BI Training
  • Provided BI and dimensional modeling training to more than 25 IU staff
  • Delivered infoshare on installing and using the Business Intelligence Development Suite
• BI Outreach
  • Completed a presentation and demonstration at the Statewide IT Conference
  • Presented the BI Initiative at the IU SharePoint Users Group
  • Developed a web application to submit new BI project suggestions

When the 2009 Indiana University Strategic Plan for Information Technology was released, it highlighted the need to improve access to information for decision-making through modeling data around our business objectives and providing state of the art analysis and reporting tools.

An IU Business Intelligence Task Force was assembled to pursue the initiative which became known as the ‘IU Business Intelligence Initiative’. The Task Force includes more than 25 individuals representing a wide cross-section of campuses and departments at IU.

It became clear to that the University could benefit from an independent external assessment of IU's current decision support environment and, more generally, the University's business intelligence capacities. IBM was commissioned to conduct the external assessment which involved interviews with more than 170 IU academic and administrative staff members representing many key areas.

The Indiana University Business Intelligence Readiness Assessment and Roadmap was delivered to the BI Task Force by IBM. The document contains an assessment of IU’s readiness for Business Intelligence and a recommended roadmap to use in planning the initiative.

The BI Task Force concluded that an ‘IU version’ of the ‘Roadmap’ should be developed based on the IBM recommendation, and consequently conducted a day-long workshop in which various aspects of the roadmap were more clearly defined.

The IU BI Roadmap is being completed along with the supporting documentation. This includes plans for communications, education, governance and others. A plan is also being developed which details the next phase of the project. This will involve establishing the standards and procedures we will follow in each implementation project

The BI Task Force will select several projects as candidates for initial implementations and begin gathering requirements in order to define the scope and determine the resource requirements. Selected projects will deliver value to the institution, demonstrate the value of Business intelligence at Indiana University and develop the infrastructure & expertise upon which to base future projects.

Projects will have different characteristics in terms of access to information, maturity of requirements, availability of resources and other attributes which will all be used to develop implementation plans specific to each project. Work will proceed on each project but the nature of the activities, staff involvement and resource requirements will vary greatly from one project to another.