Customer story · SUNY Adirondack
Using Argos to help students and staff succeed
SUNY Adirondack went from one employee hand-building every report to departments running their own. Report usage quadrupled, and the data now supports targeted recruitment and outreach to students who are struggling.
Queensbury, New York
Public, 2-year community college
Argos
- Less redundant report workReduced redundancies in report creation across departments.
- Recruitment and retentionData now used to enhance recruitment and student retention.
- Report usage quadrupledThe college quadrupled the number of reports it uses.
SUNY Adirondack at a glance
1961
Founded
4,000
Students
94
Full-time faculty and staff
199
Part-time faculty and staff
30
Undergraduate programs
01
The challenge
One employee, every report, written from scratch
Before Argos, SUNY Adirondack, a State University of New York institution, had no tools for compiling reports. Even after the college implemented Banner by Ellucian, its IT department had to compile all of the institution’s reports by hand and even coordinate email blasts.
One designated full-time employee was charged with writing and running sequences in the legacy system from scratch, then gathering the results and sending them to departments manually.
Admissions waited on IT
Even email blasts for open houses and recruitment programs went through IT.
Applicants out of focus
Admissions couldn’t research applicants or run carefully targeted recruitment.
Struggling students unseen
Data on current students couldn’t readily identify those struggling academically.
Because the reporting process was laborious, slow, and limited, SUNY Adirondack wasn’t going beyond the tip of the iceberg in using analytics to help students.
02
The solution
Reports in the hands of the people who need them
After the transition to Banner, SUNY Adirondack implemented Argos because it gave end users the opportunity to create and run reports on their own. Since then, Argos has saved IT and other departments immeasurable amounts of time and given them invaluable insight into students’ needs.
For IT especially, Argos ended the cycle of writing the same code over and over whenever another department requested a report. After years of a limited number of static reports, department directors found they could get information faster on their own, and reach a wider range of data.
“We’re very happy with the relationship we have with Evisions. We’re constantly challenging the developers and the management of Evisions with ideas of where the product should go, and we’ve actually seen some of our requests come to fruition. That’s rare.”
Angela Spackmann · Banner Functional Support Specialist
Registrar and Admissions
In the registrar’s office, staff can check which students are not in compliance with New York State immunization standards, and verify class attendance for certification, with a few clicks. Instead of scrolling through years’ worth of room scheduling data, staff get only the relevant information they need.
Busy admissions counselors now manage their own email blasts to prospective students about upcoming recruitment events and open houses, instead of relying on IT. With access to far more information than before, they run more targeted recruitment, communicate better with cohorts of applicants from a given area, and track where students are coming from to identify trends.
| Before | With Argos |
|---|---|
| One employee writing every report from scratch | End users create and run their own reports |
| A limited number of static reports | A wider range of data, and four times as many reports |
| Email blasts to prospective students coordinated by IT | Admissions counselors manage their own |
| Years of room scheduling data to scroll through | Reports with only the relevant information |
“
I came to SUNY Adirondack from a school with no reporting tool, where everything had to be requested. When I got up here and found Argos, it was just unbelievable how much easier it made my job.
Cynthia Zielaskowski · Director of Registration and Records, SUNY Adirondack
03
The results
Flagging struggling students at midterm
The reports generated by Argos have begun to help the college identify students who are struggling academically.
During the Spring 2014 term, IT staff wrote an Argos report that flagged students with two or more C’s on their midterm report cards. Those students were contacted with information about tutoring and advising, and the college is hopeful that Argos will help it be more proactive in helping students and improving retention.
Four times the reports
The college quadrupled the number of reports it uses.
Targeted recruitment
Admissions tracks where students come from and reaches applicant cohorts directly.
Early outreach
Students with two or more midterm C’s receive tutoring and advising information.
Time back for IT
No more writing the same code over and over for each request.
Reporting has matured. Instead of using reports purely for day-to-day operations, departments now look at more analytic data, and will keep using that access to improve the student experience while saving staff precious time, resources, and effort.
“
Argos has given us the opportunity to break down reports and analyze specific data points. We’re getting much more information than we originally were able to.
Sarah Linehan
Director of Admissions
More customer stories
What other institutions changed
Oakland University
Stop-out students found in seconds, not 20 minutes
Oakland rebuilt its stop-out reporting in Argos. A query that took more than 20 minutes returns in under 30 seconds, and every cycle gives back over 40 minutes that other offices spent waiting.
ArgosStudent SuccessIT
Fashion Institute of Technology
Admissions letters in minutes, not hours
One-click automation replaced manual letter generation, which now takes under 10 minutes. Data accuracy reached 99 percent and report verification time fell by up to 90 percent.
ArgosAdmissionsInstitutional Research
Holmesglen Institute of TAFE
Student notices moved from the mailroom to the inbox
Notices that staff had printed, stuffed, and mailed now go out as HTML emails built in Argos, cutting postage and paper costs and getting faster replies from students.
ArgosRegistrarFinance
Your turn
Put the right data in the right hands
Tell us what your offices are e-mailing back and forth today. We will show you what it looks like as a dashboard people trust, on your ERP.
Ellucian Partner Award
2025: Customer First
Ethos Connected
since 2020
Ellucian partner
22 years