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Southeast Community College Cuts Data Mining & Evaluation Time with Informer
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Data-as-a-Service
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Duane Roth, IT Programmer/Analyst and the team at Southeast Community College require a monthly upload be processed for all retirement deposits for 700+ employees on the payroll. This report must be sent in a specific file format with a minimum of five records per employee configured with specific field lengths. Several years ago they were using a well-known report writer to create the multiple records required. The collection process took nearly one hour to format the data for all 700+ employees and send that output to an MS Excel file for further manipulations. The Excel file was then put into a COBOL program, and the pre-defined formatted output records were created for the upload. Each month the data collection time would increase as another month of data needed to be evaluated. 'Our initial run of several years ago went from a couple of minutes to almost an hour for data collection', says Roth.
About The Customer
Southeast Community College is an educational institution that serves a large number of students and staff. The college employs over 700 individuals who are on the payroll, necessitating a robust and efficient system for managing various administrative tasks, including retirement deposits. The IT department, led by Duane Roth, plays a crucial role in ensuring that these tasks are carried out smoothly and efficiently. The college has been facing challenges related to data collection and reporting, which have been time-consuming and resource-intensive. The need for a more efficient system became apparent as the data collection time increased significantly over the years, putting a strain on valuable IT resources.
The Solution
Using Informer, data evaluation and collection went from nearly one hour to under a minute. Southeast was able to create one report with all the required data elements and then export to an Excel macro file for additional data manipulation. Much of this data manipulation can now be done using the 'Add Calculations' feature of Informer 4.0. 'The whole process from start to upload is now just a few minutes compared to an hour previously', says Roth. Multiple files are accessed by Informer in this report and through links within many of their reports. 'Moving data fields to a different order in the report are also a snap', says Roth. 'Reporting capabilities are easy to use and the new 'Add Calculations' feature will deliver significant benefits.' What he loves most about the latest release of Informer, says Roth, are the added benefits of using SQL files for input and the ease of formatting the reports. 'We have realized significant time savings', says Roth. 'Selections run much quicker and the ability to manipulate the result view immediately after the report is executed is a huge win for our users. I believe they will appreciate the added control and flexibility.'
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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