Higher Ed Data Reporting Modernization: Automating Data Validation & Reporting

Background

The Customer works with 16 member states with 224 Institutions and 345 End Users to improve public education at every level, from pre-K through Ph.D. SREB's work includes providing data on education, workforce, and policies for states in the Southern region. They offer Educators training via Professional Development, Coaching, and curricula to help Educators strengthen student learning. The client also helps states collaborate to share resources and improve educational attainment.

Challenge

The Customer had an antiquated and manual process of collating data into Excel reports and managing Programs and Institution-related processes with SQL databases that required expert maintenance. Existing tools, on the public website and at our client, made it difficult for users to analyze, dynamically interact with, and act on data effectively.

Approach

We held Discovery calls where we assessed their current process, pain points, and their business needs. We held Tollgate readouts of what we heard and our proposed solution of automation and streamlined processes. We held weekly meetings with the 4 different Pillars at SREB and reviewed the features we were building. We were able to get feedback and incorporate that feedback into our designs. We presented Show and Tells to the Executive committee to keep them informed of the progress and facilitated communication of developments to all of the Stakeholders. We provided Testing plans for UAT Testing and conducted Training sessions for all Users. We provided Support in all aspects of the project. To streamline reporting and data validation workflows, Tableau dashboards were embedded directly within Salesforce Lightning pages. Program managers and data stewards could access interactive analytics inside their Salesforce environment, allowing them to monitor submissions, review validation results, and track reporting metrics without switching tools. This embedded experience reduced manual reporting steps, improved data transparency, and accelerated the institution’s data review and decision-making processes.

Key results

Benefits

A quick and easy way to manage data, disseminate information, and keep track of processes through the implementation of Salesforce, Tableau, and Snowflake to allow our client to easily scale into the future.

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