Baylor University · Higher Education · Houston, TX · 20 weeks
University-wide data governance program established
A private research university faced inconsistent enrollment and research data across eight departments, which risked federal compliance. We implemented a data governance framework that aligned metrics university-wide and automated reporting processes, cutting $2.8 million in annual labor costs.
Challenge
The university’s eight administrative units tracked enrollment and research metrics independently, without shared definitions or oversight. This caused major discrepancies that forced three months of manual data reconciliation every year for federal IPEDS and NSF reports. The process cost $2.8 million in staff time. The Department of Education warned the provost about inconsistent reporting, highlighting the urgent need to fix data governance.
Outcome
By week 8, we finalized and agreed on all 42 metric definitions. By week 20, we automated the IPEDS and NSF reporting pipelines. This cut annual federal reporting labor from $2.8 million to $320,000. The Department of Education’s warning was addressed, and the university passed the next compliance review without issues.
Results
- $2.8M Annual reporting labor automated
- 42 Metrics certified across 8 units
- 3 months to 2 days Federal reporting cycle
- 0 Compliance findings in review
The Department of Education flagged us, and we used to spend three months every year doing manual reconciliation. Thinklytics helped us fix the metric conflicts and automated the reports. Now, our compliance review is simple, and what took three months before only takes two days.