The Challenge
At the University of Idaho, the Financial Aid Services team was buried under manual processes and legacy reporting tools that no longer served the needs of a modern, data-driven institution. Core operations like Pell Grant reporting were painfully manual, requiring more than 40 individual Banner jobs, complex spreadsheets, and staff working over the weekend just to stay compliant.
Reporting processes relied on outdated tools, including reports built over 20 years ago, maintained purely by habit. Staff had to manually export and compare spreadsheets, highlight mismatches, and stitch data together to meet federal deadlines. Key team members regularly worked late or over weekends, and when changes were needed, updates had to go through IT, adding delays and creating bottlenecks across compliance, enrollment, and communication.
“Before Argos, we were running jobs one at a time and highlighting mismatches in Excel. It was slow, frustrating, and easy to get wrong.”
The Solution
While the university had long owned Evisions Argos, it hadn’t been fully leveraged. That changed when the Financial Aid Services team partnered with IT and Evisions to expand access, bring report design in-house, and modernize their approach.
The transformation started with the Pell Grant process, which went from a week-long, multi-person effort to an automated dashboard completed in under an hour. More than 40 Banner jobs were consolidated and simplified. Instead of manually sorting Excel files and hunting for discrepancies, staff now click one button and view clean, validated data instantly.
The team also created dashboards to support ISIR tracking, Pell recalculations, and student outreach. Argos enables the Financial Aid Office to efficiently design, edit, and track award letters and other communications, delivering important information to students and families as early as possible.
The Results
The shift to Argos didn’t just eliminate manual steps; it triggered a complete rethinking of how the Financial Aid Services team operates. The Pell process alone now saves up to 10 hours per week, and award communications no longer require weekend staff or spreadsheet gymnastics.
Time savings translated into role evolution. One operations position, previously focused almost entirely on prepping and fixing data, was reshaped into a broader, strategy-focused role, allowing the team to invest time in higher-impact work.
Meanwhile, functional users now build and manage their own dashboards, reducing reliance on IT and increasing cross-departmental agility. Argos is fully integrated into the university’s agile sprint process, helping teams collaborate, iterate, and deliver faster than ever before.
The Future
With Argos in place, the university is laying the foundation for dashboards that support retention, forecasting, audit readiness, and more. Reporting is no longer a burden; it’s a strategic asset, and the culture around data has shifted from reactive troubleshooting to proactive insight.