Customer story · Northwest Nazarene University
Making smarter decisions with Argos
Facing a costly, time-consuming BI upgrade, NNU evaluated Argos instead. It was installed campus-wide in a little over an hour, and within four months NNU was automating budget reports and rethinking fundraising and scholarships.
Nampa, Idaho
Private four-year university
Argos
- Budget reports on autopilotArgos sends budget reports to departments every week, with no work from IT.
- Dynamic views, sharper decisionsOLAP cubes reveal patterns in donor and scholarship data.
- Results in four monthsSignificant improvements, all within four months of installation.
Northwest Nazarene University at a glance
1913
Founded
1,200+
Undergraduate students
700+
Graduate students
10,000+
Continuing education students
415
Faculty and staff
01
The challenge
Upgrade the old BI tool, or find a better one?
Faced with a difficult decision about a costly and time-consuming upgrade to its Business Intelligence (BI) software, Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) wanted to find out if there was an effective and affordable alternative.
NNU has used a single ERP system, Jenzabar CX, for admissions and recruiting, registration, finance, alumni relations, and donor relations for over ten years. In that time it developed literally thousands of reports in its BI solution.
Thousands of reports
Built in the existing BI solution over more than ten years.
A costly, slow upgrade
Staying put meant a costly and time-consuming BI upgrade.
Must work with Jenzabar CX
The single ERP for admissions, registration, finance, alumni, and donors.
Along with access to real-time data, NNU needed a BI solution that would roll out quickly, be easy to use, and work seamlessly with Jenzabar CX. Because the ability to mine and analyze data, and to keep improving that process, was especially important, NNU took the time to rethink how well its reporting tool worked. It wanted to be sure the result would support its needs now and well into the future.
02
The solution
Installed campus-wide in about an hour
While investigating alternatives, NNU’s Executive Director of IT, Eric Kellerer, and his team discovered Evisions’ Argos Enterprise Reporting Solution. After evaluating it at no cost, NNU was confident Argos was a better long-term solution than upgrading.
Because Argos gives end users access through a secure web interface, IT staff did not have to install the product on individual PCs, a major time-saver. Kellerer was amazed that Argos was installed on the whole campus in a little over an hour. The report conversion that followed went smoothly as well, and Evisions spent a few days training the IT staff.
NNU uploaded its finished reports to the Evisions CO-OP User Community, a common repository for report sharing that all Evisions clients can use. Before investing time in new reports, NNU can check the CO-OP for something similar, download it, and modify it to suit its needs.
| Before | With Argos |
|---|---|
| IT generates budget reports and mails them to departments | Argos schedules and delivers them automatically each week |
| A costly, time-consuming BI upgrade ahead | Argos evaluated at no cost, installed in a little over an hour |
| Projects that took 10–15 different reports | The same projects in one DataBlock |
“The scheduling functions in Argos are incredibly useful and versatile, not to mention user-friendly. Setting up a schedule to execute, burst into different reports, and send dynamic e-mails can be configured in just a few minutes.”
Scott Osborne · Systems Analyst / Programmer
“
It is rare to find a software vendor that truly puts customers first. Evisions demonstrates this with the quality of their software and customer support. Their software installs quickly, is easy to learn and it just works like it should. We spend at most a quarter of the time supporting Evisions software as we did with our previous reporting software.
Brian Stillman · Dir. Administrative Computing, Northwest Nazarene University
03
The results
Donor and scholarship data, seen from every angle
NNU immediately took notice of how powerful its new reporting tool was, particularly dashboards for trends and summaries, automated report scheduling and delivery, and OLAP cubes for analyzing data in multiple dimensions.
Report scheduling helps budget officers stay on track while reducing work for IT, which no longer has to generate budget reports and mail them out. Argos DataBlocks, subsets of the ERP with all data relationships intact, let individual users access information pertinent to their jobs, sort and filter records, and run reports as they wish, with graphical, drag-and-drop tools.
In one case, NNU used OLAP cubes to evaluate donor demographics and the effectiveness of different fundraising events, and discerned which were most effective in each geographical area. Now it focuses fundraising on the events donors are most interested in, and those that yield the greatest return.
NNU also analyzed five years’ worth of scholarship records to predict acceptance rates based on factors such as the amount offered and academic major. Now the university offers more grants than are available upfront, knowing certain percentages will not accept, so it can help people earlier in the admissions process rather than waiting for cancellations.
Weekly budget reports, automated
Budget officers stay on track without IT generating reports.
Self-service analysis
Users sort, filter, and run reports themselves with drag-and-drop tools.
Fundraising, focused
Donor analysis shows which events work best in each region.
Scholarship offers, sooner
Five years of records predict acceptance, so help comes earlier.
Remarkably, NNU implemented all of these improvements and more in just the four months since installation.
“
We’re just beginning to see the power and versatility of the Argos software. Projects that used to take us 10-15 different reports can now be accomplished in one DataBlock.
Eric Kellerer
Executive Director of IT
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