Challenge: No Easy Access to Critical Information

National University of Health Sciences (NUHS) is the premier institution for health science education. Located in Lombard, Illinois, the university sets the standard in preparing students for careers in healthcare – including chiropractic, naturopathic, and oriental medicine; acupuncture; massage therapy; biomedical science; and more. NUHS has nearly 600 students attending two academic colleges and a continuing education college - and approximately 175 faculty and staff.

As the university grew in size and added new academic programs, it realized that – to remain competitive – it needed to improve on its information strategy. With the then-current system, NUHS managers and executives couldn't access the critical business information they needed to make informed decisions. "It was a much different picture back then – just one year ago," says Keith R. Werosh, University Registrar at NUHS. "Each department did its own thing. Everything was more or less on spreadsheets that each department maintained, and the availability of data was significantly delayed. It was a big problem." The university started looking for a solution to help it collect and share information throughout the organization.

Approach: Web-Based Viewing, via crystalreports.com

NUHS chose Crystal Reports, crystalreports.com, and the CAMS higher education administrative system by Three Rivers Systems. CAMS bundled Crystal Reports into its application, and – in order to use the crystalreports.com service – the university upgraded to Crystal Reports XI. "To extract any information out of CAMS," says Werosh, "we need to use Crystal Reports. Reporting is invaluable to our information-sharing objectives."

crystalreports.com is a Web-based report-sharing service that allows organizations to instantly share Crystal Reports with the right people.

"Now we've eliminated information silos, and everyone is looking at the same information on crystalreports.com. We weren't able to do anything like that before," says Werosh. "In the past, we tried e-mailing PDFs of reports and having a shared folder on our network, but that didn't come close to the flexibility and power of using crystalreports.com. Now I can host my reports on crystalreports.com, create report groups, define user and group permissions, and my users are able to view those reports on the Web - whether or not they have Crystal Reports installed."

Results: Cost-Effective and User-Friendly

Werosh says the university appreciates the long list of benefits that the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio provided, including cost-effectiveness, ease of use for end users and administrators, and no dependence on IT.

Cost-effectiveness: "We have a fairly tight technology budget," says Werosh. "And crystalreports.com was appealing because it was included with the cost of purchasing one copy of Crystal Reports XI. It's a great enhancement to the product – it's that next step."

• End-user ease of use: At the top of Werosh's list for benefits that a business intelligence (BI) solution would have to offer was ease of use. "My user-base has different levels of technology expertise," explains Werosh, "and crystalreports.com provides an easy user interface: People sign up, log in, and they're able to obtain the information they need quickly and easily. And they can do this on their own, which is very appealing to them."
• Administrator ease of use: "The BI solution was remarkably fast to get up and running – it's very intuitive, and the instructions are great," says Werosh. "In about 10 minutes, I learned about the service and had one report hosted. As soon as I signed people up, there were a few more people that jumped on right away. I've been adding more reports and users ever since."
• No dependence on IT: For organizations that have a limited staff, crystalreports.com is a very attractive solution. "We have three people in IT," says Werosh, "and they're spread pretty thin doing other projects. With SAP BusinessObjects, it was very easy to get started. I just signed up, uploaded a few reports, and I was ready to go."

Quick Access, Improved Visibility, and Compliance

The university's current users, who range from front-line administrative staff to executive management, need information to manage their departments – including admissions, housing, student accounts and billings, and financial aid. crystalreports.com was a welcome solution for all the departments. Werosh notes the following specific examples:

• Admissions – The biggest advantage for admissions is the quick access to data. "We host a report on crystalreports.com that gives us a snapshot view of enrollment information," says Werosh. "Today, we get this on day 10 of the term. Before, that information wasn't available until a couple of months into the term. This is a huge help in terms of informing the deans and executive management where we are and where we need to be for each program."
• Marketing – The university's marketing managers have access to Crystal Reports on crystalreports.com that shows them what geographic regions their prospects are coming from and what programs they're interested in. This helps the managers see where their marketing dollars should be spent.
• Finance – Visibility into the university's financial data has also improved. "The deans have access to sophisticated reports through crystalreports.com," explains Werosh, "that gives them easy access to enrollment, cost, and attrition information – which helps them look at the big picture. And since it's coming from one centralized source, we're more efficient in how we manage the colleges."
• Academics – With access to their Crystal Reports, the academics staff is able to identify which student's grades are slipping and take necessary preventative measures.
• Compliance – The University also uses Crystal Reports to share information on federal compliance and state requirements issues.

In the future, Woresh will explore taking advantage of the crystalreports.com premium service. "Our goal," says Werosh, "is to get users creating reports on their own. At that point, we'll be interested in leveraging the premium service so that we can host an unlimited number of reports and have enhanced folder security. This would really maximize the value we get out of Crystal Reports and get people more involved with looking at data and making useful decisions with it."

Business Benefits

• Secure sharing of reports over the Web
• Nothing to deploy
• No additional costs
• Maximizes Crystal Reports investment
• Simple to use

End-User Benefits

• Shares information on admissions, costs, and attrition
• Helps meet compliance requirements
• Enables ability to make informed decisions based on one version of the truth
• Allows instant access to valuable information

The university chose the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio because the university's student information system used Crystal Reports, so the purchase of SAP BusinessObjects Crystal Reports XI allowed it to further customize reports and extract additional data. Before implementing the software, managers and executives couldn't access critical information they needed to make informed decisions. Each department was "doing its own thing," on spreadsheets that each department maintained. So the availability of data was significantly delayed.