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EDUCAUSE Achieves 80% Cost Savings & 40x Faster Insights Through Data Modernization

EDUCAUSE Achieves 80% Cost Savings & 40x Faster Insights Through Data Modernization

The quality of a company’s data infrastructure is a critical element of operations. From data management to analysis to reporting, the vast technical capabilities require ongoing upkeep and optimization. For industry-leading technology association, EDUCAUSE, data is integral to how the association powers its operations and meets its members’ technology needs. However, as their strategic goals evolved, their systems needed to be modernized to support growth, enhance efficiency, and meet the increasing demands of their members. Ready to revamp their data ecosystem, EDUCAUSE turned to UDig. Through in-depth discovery, we implemented a new data strategy and platform to help modernize their analytics capabilities and accelerate their impact.

How We Went from Ideas to Impact

  • The Idea

    Empower EDUCAUSE with a streamlined self-sufficient data ecosystem that reduces the time they spend on platform maintenance and ad-hoc member requests. By implementing an efficient data analytics solution, they could access near real-time insights. This would enable more accurate reporting, faster decision-making, and more efficient and cost-effective operations.

  • The Process

    Engage EDUCAUSE with a three-phase approach that would encompass their complete data ecosystem and operational improvements: 1. data strategy and roadmap, 2. business intelligence (BI) system migration and 3. modern data platform. Through this strategic framework, we could first identify the opportunities they had for modernization and then pave the way for implementing their data strategy for long-term success.

  • The Impact

    EDUCAUSE reduced their operational cost by 80% and improved their infrastructure maintenance time to 1/10th of the previous figure. By doing so, their operational and executive dashboards run 40 times faster, and they have vastly more efficient and accurate information consumption. Now, they can prioritize their time to focus on business opportunities and operations, while accelerating their impact for members.

  • UDig’s ability to move quickly while maintaining precision and strategic focus was invaluable. They helped us transition to a modern, scalable data platform, dramatically improving our reporting speed and reducing our infrastructure costs by 80%—all with minimal disruption to our daily work.
    Joe RyanVice President & Chief Information Officer, EDUCAUSE

The Idea

Unlock Scalable Growth and Efficiency Through Data Modernization

As a technology association, EDUCAUSE has become a go-to resource in helping universities deliver robust technology to support students, teachers, and stakeholders. They provide their members with a variety of data analytics services, and as the association has grown, their strategic goals have also grown. So, they needed to evolve their infrastructure to meet operational goals for both their members and their own business needs.    

To accelerate the impact for their members, we addressed various top-level IT priorities:  

  1. Implementing a well-documented, business-aligned data warehouse with a modernized data-loading process. EDUCAUSE will take full control of its data by refining an undocumented warehouse, modernizing to align with business goals, and establishing clear documentation. Doing so will help them reduce costs, increase efficiency, and enable deeper insights.
  2. Improving server speeds and moving to a modern lakehouse architecture. Replacing legacy analytics databases will enhance performance and resource efficiency, addressing slow speeds and high resource consumption.
  3. Organizing and isolating data to improve storage, reporting, and analysis. Moving to a medallion architecture will allow for better organization, isolation, and usability of data. Doing so enables easier data access and retrieval, and a clearer view of the data pipeline.
  4. Building consistent, well-established data governance procedures into infrastructure. Enhancing documentation, improving communication with technical teams, and reducing reliance on third-party services will streamline data management for greater efficiency and control.
  5. Establishing business rules for lakehouses and decreasing costs. Implementing clear retention policies will optimize data storage, control costs, and ensure valuable data remains accessible.  

The Process

A Strategic Three-Phase Approach to Data Modernization

Once we understood our client’s business goals and their modernization priorities, we got to work over a course of three years to help them revamp and transform their operations.   

Phase 1: Data Strategy & Roadmap

First, we focused on designing a data strategy that would modernize their data aggregation, analysis, and reporting infrastructure. A major goal was to simplify the number of tools they had to manage within their data infrastructure while enabling near-time strategic decision-making. Specifically, we worked to achieve three goals: 

  1. Modernize their data analytics enterprise architecture in order to reduce the risks and costs associated with infrastructure sustainability and maintenance.
  2. Increase the performance of their data reporting design, development, and distribution workflows.
  3. Increase the quality of their data analysis capabilities to deliver improved strategic insights.

Phase 2: BI System Migration  

Moving EDUCAUSE to a more widely recognized, user-friendly platform was a priority. Their previous platform Qlik was more difficult and cumbersome to use. And they couldn’t easily do business essential tasks like create dashboards, implement changes, or fix issues. As a result, EDUCAUSE stakeholders welcomed the transition, eager to leverage the new platform’s intuitive tools and enhanced flexibility.

To create their best solution, we supported them by:

  • Holding Q&A sessions. We held interviews with dashboard stakeholder groups to find where they wanted small enhancements and how they used the dashboard reporting.
  • Migrating only essential reports. By understanding which data they needed, we could prioritize and only migrate reports their teams actually used. This step decreased the number of reports the data team would be responsible for, allowing them to spend that time on other essential reporting needs. 
  • Adding enhancements. When we saw an opportunity to improve their reporting to better fit their goals, we made these changes. Our aim was to remove the unnecessarily long load times of Qlik dashboards—up to five minutes long—and make the system much easier to use. 

To pursue cost savings and technical benefits, we planned to migrate to Power BI, which is part of the Microsoft environment. This would place their BI, data pipeline, and lakehouses/warehouses under one “roof” while greatly improving system performance. 

Phase 3: Modern Data Platform

In this stage, we brought their robust data strategy to life. We worked thoroughly and proactively to help them modernize their data infrastructure to meet their various business and IT priorities.

Some key actions were:

  • Working with bleeding-edge technology. At the time of modernizing their platform, MS Fabric was a new solution and in the process of being developed. So, we had to remain nimble and at the forefront of this technology, in order to adjust appropriately along the way.
  • Building the medallion architecture. This step supported our goal of moving them away from a single-infrastructure legacy system into better organized data. By isolating data into three categories (Bronze, Silver, and Gold), their teams could identify where data is in the process and improve data usability.

Once we implemented their solution, we focused on helping EDUCAUSE seamlessly take over the data solutions. We trained their employees on how to use new systems and processes while integrating them across existing operations. 

The Impact

Leveraging Vast Business Savings Through Enterprise Data Modernization

Today, EDUCAUSE is accelerating their impact for associations through their revamped data infrastructure. They now have a cloud-based tool that maximizes how they work and creates deep savings. This data environment means they have reduced their operational expenses by 80% — and can put those financial and time savings back into other business needs.  

Rather than relying on separate software systems that don’t interact, their system now lives under the more familiar Microsoft umbrella, which simplifies and streamlines how they work. And with centrally managed data, they no longer need a cloud administrator worried about storage limits. Pulling data happens in a matter of seconds instead of minutes, with operational and executive dashboards running 40 times faster. And the data infrastructure is 90% more efficient to maintain, meaning employees can do more impactful work with that time savings. Across the board, data queries and reporting are faster, the user experience is better, and software costs have drastically reduced. By prioritizing their modernization, EDUCAUSE can now focus on supporting their members with steadfast service.

  • How We Did It
    Business IntelligenceData Acquisition & IntegrationData Architecture & InfrastructureData Strategy & GovernanceStrategic Planning & Roadmapping
  • Tech Stack
    Microsoft FabricPower BIPython (primarily PySpark)Qlik SenseSQL

Digging In

  • State Government

    Unlocking Data Insights for a State Education Agency

    A data-enabled agency that can leverage predictive analytics to provide its school districts, students, and parents with data-driven information that fosters informed decisions.

  • Strategy & Planning

    Creating a Tech Strategy to Power Growth​

    An 18-month roadmap that integrates data with technology for a robust strategy that expedites business value and results.

  • State Government

    Modernization Effort at Large University

    Modernized forms offering the benefits of single sign-on authentication and an overall improved user experience.

  • Healthcare

    Faster, More Accurate Search Saves Lives at UVA Health System

    A fully functional, robust and customizable solution which provides weighted results to further improve and optimize the system’s accuracy, thereby decreasing the time spent searching for answers.

  • Healthcare

    ETL Tools Leveraged for Healthcare Provider

    Successful migration with minimal disruption, supplemented by training of technical resources for long-term success within organization.