Reporting for Higher Education
Everyone gets answers. Your team still owns the definitions.
The registrar pulls the census count, financial aid works its exceptions, finance closes the month, and IR stops rebuilding last year's numbers, all without a request to IT. Every office answers its own questions, and the answers agree.
Trusted across community colleges, private institutions, public universities, and statewide systems
The situation
Reporting capability should not depend on who is available
Institutions collect more than enough data. What they lack is a way to let people use it without either giving them the keys or making them ask.
The EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues list is clear that literacy alone does not fix this. Data-informed decision-making relies on more than user skill, because "the data must be accurate and trustworthy, accessible to the stakeholders who need it, and supported by reliable analytics and reporting tools."
01
The answer depends on who is free this week
A dean, a counselor, and a budget manager all need something. All three requests land with the same two people, and the order they get answered in has nothing to do with what matters.
02
Access is all or nothing
Somebody wants to look one thing up. Granting a database credential is disproportionate. Denying it makes you the obstacle.
03
The self-service tool produced a copy
It extracted the data, and from that moment the copy and the source began to drift. Two dashboards, two definitions of enrollment, one uncomfortable meeting.
04
Your reporting strategy is a person
They know the schema, the joins, and the history. When they take another job, most of it leaves with them.
The governed layer
One definition. Everyone works inside it.
Argos separates who writes the query from who runs the report. Your team owns the logic, the joins, the institutional definitions, and the permissions. Every other office selects parameters, filters, schedules, and exports without seeing a schema.
Who can run what is decided in one place, and the same permissions cover the report, the dashboard, and the plain-language answer. Against your ERP directly, not against a copy your own team has to maintain.
- Unlimited users and unlimited connections, with no ERP login required
- Permissions set once at the folder and DataBlock level, covering reports, dashboards, and Data Agent
- Reporting logic in documented, portable objects that survive staff turnover
- Against your systems directly instead of an extract you maintain
“Information that used to be spread across Excel spreadsheets and email chains is now housed in one central repository.”
Dr. Emily Stuckenbruck · Dean of Liberal Arts and Business · Nicolet College
SELECT program, headcountFROM DataBlock: EnrollmentWHERE term = :termArgos X
Dashboards and plain-language questions on the same governed data
Argos X is what self-service looks like once the governance is settled. Dashboard Designer builds and shares dashboards from the browser, embedded in your portal. Explore Data and Pivot Mode let anyone reshape a result without writing a query.
Argos Data Agent adds plain-language questions, answered against your governed objects instead of the raw database, with the SQL visible so anyone can check the answer before acting on it.
- Dashboard Designer, Explore Data, and Pivot Mode are included with Argos at no additional cost
- Argos Data Agent is licensed separately, in Core and Advanced tiers
- Everything inherits the permissions and definitions your team already set
- Nothing to install for the people who run reports; everything above runs in the browser
“People are not only getting the information they need, but they're learning how to think about data as well.”
Jon King · Business Intelligence Analyst · Lansing Community College
The calendar that does not move
Submissions, board packets, and the documents around them
IPEDS, state enrollment files, accreditation evidence, and grant reporting all arrive on their own schedule, in formats set by someone else, with funding attached.
Argos produces the formatted output those submissions require from live data and delivers it on a schedule. Definitions are saved once and run the same way the next time an auditor asks how a figure was derived.
- Fixed-width and delimited extracts that go to agencies without reformatting
- Banded PDF with your branding for board and committee reporting
- Cohort definitions saved once and run the same way in a future year
- Scheduled delivery by email or FTP
Built to last
Reporting that survives the upgrade and the migration
Reporting logic lives in documented objects rather than in a query one person wrote and never wrote down. The definition, the joins, and the permissions are the institutional knowledge, and they stay when the person who built them moves on.
Argos connects to Banner SaaS through the Ellucian Data Gateway and to Colleague SaaS through the Data Gateway and Ethos REST APIs, live on customer campuses today.
- Reporting definitions live in documented objects rather than in a query somebody wrote once
- MAPS handles authentication, permissions, and query management once, across every product
- One HECVAT, one Trust Center, one security review
- On-premises, hybrid, or SaaS, with the same permission model in each
“We're really making a push to make decisions based off of data. Without Argos, we wouldn't even be close to that goal.”
Dana Walters · Director of the ITS Project Management Office · Cuyahoga Community College
Not sure where to start?
Reports, dashboards, AI, documents, and payments, all from one governed source. Get a demo and see which starting point fits your ERP and your team.
Related
Most people arrive with a system, a job, or an institution in mind
By system
By capability
By department
By institution type
How it fits
Where this sits relative to what you already run
With your ERP
Argos sits above the ERP instead of inside it, querying live data through governed objects. It does not replace the system of record and does not require you to move data into a warehouse first.
With Ellucian Insights
Insights aggregates data across Ellucian products on a managed data layer. Argos works directly against your own environment, covering dashboards through Dashboard Designer, conversational analysis through Argos Data Agent, compliance output, and scheduled delivery, on definitions your team controls. Most institutions run both.
With a general-purpose BI tool
Plenty of institutions run a general-purpose BI tool, and many point it at Argos as the governed source. Many others find they no longer need it: Dashboard Designer builds and publishes dashboards on the same governed objects, under the same permissions, with no extract and no second tool to secure. Either way, the dashboard depends on agreeing what the fields mean, and in Argos that work happens once.
Trust and security
You take security seriously. So do we.
The Trust Center is published and the HECVAT is available on request, so a reviewer can start before anyone schedules a call.
Permissions are enforced, never overridden
A report can only be opened by someone your team has permissioned to run it, and a view is built for the role that needs it. Permissions are enforced at the platform layer instead of by a filter someone can remove.
Authentication
LDAP group sync, SAML SSO, and permission tiers, configured once and applied across every product.
Production performance
Query queuing and priority keep reporting load from competing with the transactional system.
Data handling
FERPA-aligned practices and encryption in transit. For Argos Data Agent, masking or redaction of sensitive fields.
Deployment
On-premises, hybrid, or SaaS, with the same permission model in each.
Documentation
Trust Center, and a HECVAT (the standard higher education security questionnaire) on request.
Frequently asked questions
Questions we get asked first
What exactly is Argos?
A governed reporting layer that sits above your ERP. Your team defines queries, joins, and permissions as objects. The rest of campus runs those objects without database access.
Do we need a data warehouse first?
No. Argos queries your systems directly.
Which ERPs does it work with?
Banner and Colleague on-premises and in SaaS, plus other student systems, CRMs, and data sources through ODBC, REST, and API connections.
Do users need an ERP seat or login?
No. Licensing is per institution with unlimited users, and report access requires neither.
How is this different from a BI tool?
A BI tool visualizes data somebody else has already extracted and governed. Argos is the governed source, and it builds the dashboards too: Dashboard Designer publishes them on the same objects and permissions as your reports, so there is no extract to maintain and no second security model. Institutions that keep a BI tool point it at Argos; many find they no longer need one.
What is included with Argos, and what is licensed separately?
Dashboard Designer, Explore Data, and Pivot Mode are included with Argos at no additional cost. Argos Data Agent is licensed separately, in Core and Advanced tiers.
How does this coexist with Ellucian Insights?
Insights aggregates across Ellucian products on a managed data layer. Argos runs against your own environment on your team's definitions. Most institutions run both.
What happens when we upgrade or move to SaaS?
Reporting definitions live in documented objects rather than in a query somebody wrote once, and Professional Services scopes what moves to SaaS against your own inventory.
Do you also do documents and payments?
Yes, as separate products on the same platform. FormFusion produces and delivers documents, IntelleCheck handles payments. Neither requires Argos.
We already have a dashboard tool. Why add another platform?
You can keep it, and Argos can be the governed source it reads from so the numbers agree. You may not need to: Dashboard Designer builds and publishes dashboards on the same governed objects, under the same permissions, and adds the operational half a visualization tool skips: paginated output, delivery on a schedule to a named person, and documents that have to look exactly right.
We cannot take on another report conversion.
It is real work. What makes it smaller than it looks is that a large share of legacy reports turn out to be the same query with a different filter, which one object with parameters absorbs, and that the CO-OP library and the Banner and Colleague Starter Packs cover a good share of the standard reporting before anyone writes a query. Professional Services inventories what you run, converts what matters in priority order, and runs both in parallel until the old one can be retired.
How long does implementation take?
It depends on your environment and how much you want migrated on day one. Professional Services scopes it with you. The people doing that scoping ran campus IT and institutional reporting before they worked here.
What does it cost, and can we talk to an institution like ours?
Licensing is per institution rather than per user, and price is driven by institution size and product mix rather than headcount. Argos, Argos X, FormFusion, and IntelleCheck all carry unlimited users and unlimited connections, with no per-connection or per-report charge and nothing billed for people who only read reports. The one exception is Argos Data Agent Advanced, which is licensed per seat. Data Agent Core is unlimited. Tell us your FTE and which products you are weighing and we will give you a real figure on the first call, then put you in touch with an institution of roughly your size and ERP. Ask them about support while you are there. It is in-house, and it is the thing customers raise unprompted more than anything else.
Next step
The question your campus cannot answer today
Get a demo and see what answering it looks like when the data, the definitions, and the permissions live in one place.
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