MAKE DATA-DRIVEN
DECISIONS FASTER WITH
INFORMER
Presented by:
Jennifer Northington, Entrinsik
Entrinsik Informer
It’s Your Data…We Help You Use It!
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Introduction: Why Informer?
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Web-based real-time reporting and analysis solution
Used by over 300 colleges & universities
Single-source reporting repository for your multivalue or SQL-based databases
Allows non-IT users to quickly create and maintain
their own reports
Uncover insights in real time as information changes
to make critical business decisions
Quick and easy implementation
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Benefits: An Understanding of Informer…
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Access multiple databases
Fast, direct access to your data
Single point of access
Link across database boundaries
Native DB connection and query commands
Export/Import feature: ability to share report
definitions and dashboards with other institutions with
same ERP system
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Fast Direct Access to Data
Student ERP
Informer
Reports
Other
Databases
CoHEsion Summit
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Web Based
All modern browser supporting at least HTML 4.0
and CSS2 (Internet Explorer must be version 8 or
higher for dashboards)
Modern Web 2.0 interface
Drag and drop
Intelligent auto-complete
Dynamic grouping & sorting
Scheduling and Archiving
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Recurrence: Immediately, once, daily, weekly,
monthly, quarterly, annually, or custom
Delivery options: Email, archive, export to a
network location
Scheduled alerts
Applied security settings
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Exporting options
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CSV
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PDF (with template designer)
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Live Excel (direct link to a report)
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XML
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Webpage (HTML)
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Customize, Tab delimited (.txt)
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Fixed length
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Dashboards!
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Adds instant analysis & visualizations
to your reporting solution
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Uses any data source
-Built-in providers: Informer report and
Archives, Excel, Spreadsheets, Google docs,
-Custom: plug-ins
Monitor & interact with
KPI’s and metrics
CoHEsion Summit
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Ways Customers Use Informer
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“The feature we are most excited about is the API, the tool giving us the ability to integrate Informer with our LMS through
LTI. When running a report, the user (person logged in) only has to click on the report they want to launch. The LMS then
passes the relevant criteria; user, course, etc., to a web application that then uses the Informer API to generate the report.
The data from the report is used to create charts or other visual representations that are then presented to the user within
the LMS, without having to enter any criteria or exit the LMS.”
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“Admissions has begun to leverage dashboards quite heavily and offers all users - from Admissions Counselors up to the
Director - a quick bird's eye view of data and how each staff member is progressing toward goals in their target territories.
The range of reports is staggering but illustrates how it enables Hampshire to continue improving operations: 1. Enrollment
reports in admissions keep the college administration up to date on targets, goals and opportunities 2. Our registrar can
track students who may be missing course requirements needed for their academic program.”
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“We use informer for many system integrations across campus. The ETL informer provides allows us to pull and push files
where they are needed and exactly how they are needed. We are using it to populate our web employee directory, we use
it to push information for NCAA reporting, we use it to help integrate with our assessment system, we use it with our room
scheduling software, we use it to populate our Library system, we use it to monitor our transcript requests system, we use it
to populate our student notification system, we use it with our learning management software, we use it with our campus
portal, we use it to populate custom objects in SalesForce.”
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“The implementation of Informer Dashboards has improved efficiencies throughout the college by taking key statistics and
reports that are frequently requested and making them readily available to users on demand. In Financial Aid, dashboards
displaying statistics regarding total awards, award amounts and award types are available to managers for strategic planning
and reporting. By scheduling these to refresh nightly, statistics regarding student data is available even during peak
registration/ heavy system usage times which may have delayed this information in the past. Separate dashboards have also
been created to track Veteran specific financial aid. The implementation of the public dashboard in Human Resources has
virtually eliminated report requests for standard workforce demographics such as number of full-time and part-time
employees, number of faculty, and number of full-time employees by campus. The secure HR Compensation Dashboard
allows HR Management to produce on-demand statistics regarding employee compensation by gender, ethnicity, years of
service and employment classification.”
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Ways Customers Use Informer: Cont.
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End users required IT to do the work for them, this took hours away from work that IT could be doing including creating
system customization for the betterment of the institution. The creation of Dashboards and Archiving of data sets is a vast
improvement over what we had done in the past. Reports were mainly handled through customization of delivered reports
and Query Builder in Colleague. These were distributed as one off reports or through mnemonics and often times they
needed to be modified by someone in IT. Sometimes this could take an hour and sometimes several weeks until the reports
were finished. The ability to let end users create reports that link multiple tables (files) without the need to create
computed columns to pull data in has saved us hundreds of hours of work on an annual basis. The ability to create File
Suites and then the report only once with the ability to choose different file suite years has also saved us hundreds of
hours. Cost savings, which I am unable to determine exactly, but are in the tens of thousands of dollars as the reports are so
much easier to create and maintain and many people do not print them any longer as the data is available at their finger
tips. We have over 3000 reports and had nearly 100 dashboards created and in use. The reports are used by nearly all
offices on campus from Student Affairs to the Business Office. I have built dashboards for Course Utilization to determine
when we need to add additional Gen Ed Course, evaluate Financial aid categories and acceptance and for admission
funnels. We also built out dashboards for the business office to compare month to month account balances by FY as well as
numerous other projects. One of the newest uses was to determine students that have multiple active programs and then
review the billing so that we charged them appropriately, in some instances it indicated an overcharge to the student but it
also pointed out several that were being under-billed and we were then able to recoup that lost revenue.
CoHEsion Summit
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Informer Demo
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CoHEsion Summit
Q&A
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Thanks!
Entrinsik Inc.
• jnorthington@entrinsik.com
• (919) 848-4828 opt. 3
• www.entrinsik.com
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