Customer story · Australian Catholic University
Time saved and real-time admissions data, achieved with Argos
Australian Catholic University replaced week-long spreadsheet reporting with live admissions dashboards and scheduled reports that are waiting for staff on all six campuses each morning.
North Sydney, Australia
Public university
Argos
- Real-time data for facultyFaculties see live, consistent admissions data instead of week-old spreadsheets.
- Scheduled reports free up ITReports run and arrive automatically, so IT no longer assembles them by hand.
- Many needs, one solutionAdmissions, enrolment and retention tracking for every campus in one tool.
Australian Catholic University at a glance
1991
Founded
21,000
Students
1,500
Faculty and staff
6
Campuses
150
Undergraduate programs
01
The challenge
A week to build. Out of date on arrival.
Time consuming and slow. That was the situation for Australian Catholic University (ACU), which was using spreadsheets for its Direct Admissions reporting.
The IT department had to manually assemble reports which were massive and unwieldy. Not only did the reports take an entire week to create, they also took a long time for staff to download because they were distributed as email attachments.
A week per report
IT assembled every Direct Admissions report by hand.
Attachments too big to open
Massive reports took staff a long time to download from email.
Stale on arrival
By the time staff received the report, the data was already out of date.
ACU needed a faster, more efficient way to get accurate data to its decision makers: a solution that would let end users easily manipulate data and provide one consistent version of the truth. It also had to be flexible and easy to roll out to six campuses.
02
The solution
Live admissions data, waiting every morning
ACU found the solution in Argos, the enterprise reporting solution from Evisions. Working together, ACU and Evisions developed a Direct Admissions Report built around what matters most to the university, including admissions trends and application decisions by type and campus.
The report gives staff access to live data, so they can track admissions, enrolment and retention on a daily basis. Staff who monitor admissions within the faculties use a dashboard that shows key admissions data at a glance in charts and graphs.
Decision-makers can read information at a bird’s-eye view through the dashboard, or drill down into the data with the OLAP tool. The OLAP cubes make it easy to thoroughly investigate the data and determine needs.
“Argos is user friendly. The banded report allows for easy creation of formatted reports. Pre-designed reports provide a quick way to extract the data required.”
Gabriel Spata · Student Systems Support Officer
ACU also uses the Scheduling and Delivery advanced feature of Argos to send the report to staff on a regular schedule. When they arrive at work in the morning, the report is waiting for them.
Administrative staff no longer need IT to run their reports. Developers create the report parameters and schedule the report to run automatically, freeing IT from a tedious and lengthy task. IT has also saved a lot of time by downloading pre-built report components from the Evisions CO-OP user community.
| Before | With Argos |
|---|---|
| Spreadsheets assembled by hand, a week per report | Reports that run automatically on a schedule |
| Massive email attachments, slow to download | The report waiting for staff when they arrive each morning |
| Data out of date by the time it arrived | Live data to track admissions, enrolment and retention daily |
| Administrative staff dependent on IT to run reports | Developers set the parameters once; reports run without IT |
Six campuses, one version of the truth
ACU’s six campuses span a distance of almost 2,000 kilometres. With Argos, staff from every faculty on every campus have access to the same live data, with no inconsistencies between reports. Deploying Argos to an unlimited number of users without installing anything on individual computers also saves IT the time it would have spent replicating work.
ACU has found Argos highly flexible and easy to configure to Australian university needs. The university was up and running in just one week, including three days of training, and used Evisions Professional Services both in person and online for training and report development.
“
Argos allows me to provide the Faculty Deans with up-to-the minute data on admissions where previously it took around a week to get that information together. The dashboards make it so much easier to understand the data.
Claron Driscoll · Admissions Manager, Australian Catholic University
03
The results
From a week behind to up to the minute
Argos has greatly enhanced ACU’s reporting capabilities, resulting in increased enrolment and better admissions tracking. Reports that once took a week to create now run automatically, freeing up much-needed time for IT.
One live picture
Every faculty on every campus sees the same live data.
Reports on a schedule
Reports run and arrive automatically, with no IT effort.
Dashboards for the faculties
Key admissions data at a glance, in charts and graphs.
Live in a week
Up and running in one week, including three days of training.
“
Argos saves significant time in getting data to end users throughout the Academic cycle from admission through enrolment and onto Graduation.
Leo Macpherson
Assistant Academic Registrar (Systems)
04
The future
Next: helping more students stay
Going forward, ACU plans to use Argos to increase student retention by tracking applications, admissions and enrolment. With easy access to its admissions data, and the time it needs for more efficient operations, the university can now pursue many new opportunities.
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