Ivy Tech Community College modernizes their BI platform

Challenge

Ivy Tech, a community college with dozens of locations was serving their students through accessible and affordable education and empowering them to achieve career and transfer aspirations. But the limited capabilities of the college's BI platform made it more challenging to achieve objectives and deliver adequate value.

‍Upgrading to a more effective platform was the best first step toward reaching their goals, but converting from one platform to another presented a challenge. Past attempts had not achieved the adoption levels needed to make a positive impact on the organization.

They needed an outside expert's guidance in report conversion and change management, which led them to partner with Marlabs.

Solution

Ivy Tech decided to move from Pentaho to Tableau to improve performance and gain more capabilities. Tableau works well with Snowflake, the client’s preferred data warehouse in the cloud, and Salesforce, their new CRM software.

This initiative modernized the college's existing platform and built the foundation for future improvements using technologies that work well together, making it easier for Ivy Tech to expand their BI capabilities, if desired.

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With over 1000 departmental reports to be converted, the team split the project into phases and engaged Marlabs to steer the two tracks of Phase 1:

• Conversion of reports
• Change management

The development team consisted of Marlabs consultants certified in Tableau using the agile approach with weekly sprints. To ensure that the change management portion of the project received appropriate and specialized attention, Marlabs also provided intentional thought leadership and relevant training.

The change management aspect of the project began with an assessment. What could possibly impede adoption of the new tool? What lessons can we learn from past platform conversions? The answers to these questions guided the communication plan Marlabs developed with the Ivy Tech team. It included a combination of messaging and virtual training with recorded video that users could refer to later.

How We Enhanced Performance and BI Capabilities with Tableau

In Phase 2, Marlabs successfully converted 1000+ in-scope reports and identified opportunities to consolidate some for better efficiency. Previously used reports are being phased out as user acceptance testing and ongoing training continues.

Some reports were modified to include additional graphs and KPIs and now have mobile capabilities, with each converted report having a corresponding mobile version. The team is also engaged in ongoing assessments and making new recommendations for improvements to the Snowflake environment and overall data architecture.

The client was pleased that the project went smoothly, with both tracks finishing on time and on budget. After working with Marlabs, they enthusiastically expressed their excitement over the success of the project and showed an interest in working with the team again when possible.

Results

• 1000+ in-scope reports converted to Tableau with improved user experience
• Report training and user adoption supported by intentional organizational change management
• Mobile access to reports