Business Intelligence for Higher Education in Nigeria: Towards Making Academic Data a Productive Advantage By Babajide AFOLABI (Ph.D.) and Adetunji ADEBISI Department of Computer Science and Engineering Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. Being a Paper Presented at International Conference on Transition From Observation to Knowledge to Intelligence August 20-22 2014,UNILAG, Lagos, Nigeria Content: • Introduction • What Business Intelligence is? • BI and Decision Making • Education – • BI Technology and Higher Education in Nigeria – Phases of BI Technology • BI Technology – Methodology • BI as a Productive tool for Education Sector – Sample Dashboards • The Nigeria Factor • Call to Action Emphasis on Higher Education in Nigeria Introduction: • Universities are undergoing a dramatic change triggered by varieties of technologies, competitive forces and changes to their funding model. • Most institutions have not taken advantage of records lying in administration offices; admission records, academic performance statistics and financial data to be more productive. Introduction Cont’d: • This paper provides a valuable insight into the application of data driven business tools to provide management and other stakeholders with real time information about performance indicators, benchmarks and future directions. • It further unlocks the answers that improve decision making around various educational activities —that directly impact productivity—by making information more easily accessible to a wider audience. What Business Intelligence is? • Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that include variety of software applications used to analyze raw data. • made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting etc What Business Intelligence is Cont’d ? BI results when organizational culture, business processes and technologies are designed and implemented with the goal of improving the strategic and operational decision making capabilities [This include; internal and external stake-holders] What Business Intelligence is Cont’d ? What it is not… • • • • Application Tool Report Base Archive What it is… Solution Continuous process Knowledge Base Actionable Information Business Asset BI and Decision Making Executive: We are not getting the information we need to make decisions in a timely manner. Why can’t we get it? IT: Well, we have 27 systems that we need to pull information from to create the reports that you are looking for. BI and Decision Making • Business-intelligence has proven to be an effective means of improving the decision-making within an organization. While traditionally applied to profit making private companies BI has recently been applied to public institutions as well. • It provides one stock point of view of data analysis thereby making decision making easier and simple Education at a Glance • The role of education in human development cannot be over emphasized. • no nation can rise above the quality of education its citizens receive. • 5 National objective in Nigeria cannot be achieved without education (Fed. Govt. of Nig. 2004) Higher Education in Nigeria A Fig. 1: Nigeria Higher Education Structure Source: http://eae.alberta.ca A BI Technology and Higher Education in Nigeria • BI Technology - moving beyond the practice of creating reports on past events, and towards the use of sophisticated statistical methods to predict future outcomes. Rogue Wave Software (2013). BI Technology and Higher Education in Nigeria Fig. 2: Business Intelligence Infrastructure. Source: Raghavendra (2012 Phases of BI Technology: Fig. 3: Three Phases of Business Intelligence Source: A.T. Kearney analysis (2011) Methodology: BI as a Productive tool for Education Sector By deploying the BI Model; • maximize access to information, also can • bid farewell to the massive paper trail often associated with Do not have to deal with heterogeneous and silo’s systems BI as a Productive tool for Education Sector Cont’d • Dependence on IT staff minimized • Obtain fact easily without the use of sophisticated tools. • Can perform extensive analysis of stored data to provide answers to exhaustive queries. BI as a Productive tool for Education Sector Cont’d Figure 4: BI and Higher Education Sample Dashboards Performance/Result Analytics Dashboard Fees Payment Analytics Dashboard The Nigeria Factor Conclusion: • A framework for BI in higher education is presented here. A large number of higher education applications are already in operation in most of the institutions in Nigeria. • This is the right time for introducing BI in the higher educational system in Nigeria and to further strengthen the educational sector Call to Action “You can’t manage what you can’t measure. You can’t measure what you can’t describe” Robert Kaplan and David Norton Authors of “The Balanced Scorecard” References: Idogho, P.O. (2011) Higher Education In Nigeria And The Challenges Ahead. European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011. Itedjere, P.O. (1997) History of Education. Benin City, Nigeria: Osasu Publication. Kearney, A.T. (2011) Better Decision Making with Proper Business Intelligence Quality information is key to making quick, rational business decisions, Illinois USA. Marius, C. (2009) Business Intelligence and E-Governance, “Valahia” University, Târgovite. Raghavendra, R.N. and Smeerti, T. (2012) “Business Intelligence; Building an Intelligent management” Bangalore, Karnataka state, India. Richard, K. (2006) “Intelligent Cities: developing new methods of public service management and delivery”, www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/festival/programme/urb/kingston.ppt References Cont’d: Whawo, D. D. (1997) An Introduction To The Study Of Education (2nd Edition). Benin City: World Of Books Publication. Oyaziwo, A., Philipa O., Idogho, Justina S.I (2012) Increasing Access to University Education in Nigeria: Present Challenges And Suggestions For The Future. The African Symposium: An Online Journal of the African Educational Research Network. Rogue Wave Software (2013): Driving Competitive Advantage by Predicting the Future Extending business systems with embedded predictive analytics; USA. www.roguewave.com. Watson, H. J. and Wixom, B. H. (2007) The Current State of Business Intelligence. Computer. Pp. 96-99. http://Liquidlearning.Com.Au/Llg08/May/The-Higher-EducationBusiness-Intelligence-Conference-2014.Html http://Www.Atkearney.Com/Documents/10192/79cbde83-4fa8-4bfb-B4a3-F57f400d1576 http://eae.alberta.ca/ retrieved on May 26th, 2014. Thank You