By Hank Childers, University of Arizona
At The University of Arizona we decided to combine our Business Intelligence (BI) team (which includes ETL, Data Warehouse, and Reporting) with our Institutional Research (IR) team (which includes Ad Hoc Requests along with External Reporting). This made good sense to us, and we chose to act on it. But it isn’t all that common, and that made me curious to better understand why not. So I set out to interview a number of other individuals and institutions to see what their thinking was. I presented the findings at the Higher Education Data Warehousing (HEDW) 2015 Conference in Normal, Illinois, in a session with the title: “BI+IR: Shotgun Wedding, or Marriage Made in Heaven?” These slides are available to HEDW members on the HEDW web site.
In the interviews, I started off by asking this question:
If your institution set out to combine IR and BI, how would you characterize it?
- Marriage made in heaven?
- Arranged marriage?
- Shotgun wedding?
- Las Vegas wedding?
Results spread across all the categories, with “arranged marriage” the most common response. But the actual comments were especially interesting.
While there was certainly not a uniform reaction, the question did seem to touch a nerve. I started to feel less like a researcher and more like a journalist…looking for the story. And I think there is one, with three parts to it.
- Why combine BI and IR?
- What makes it hard?
- How can we approach it?
Why combine BI and IR?
Most agree that IR and BI need to work cooperatively when necessary, but also see their missions as distinct. In a typical situation, IR focuses on external reporting of official numbers, especially student-and faculty-related, while BI focuses on operational and management level reporting of ERP systems data, including research, employee and financial data. Different data. Different users. Different uses. But these differences blur when seen by those who want to make expanded use of data in decision-making. A dean, for example, needs information of all kinds, and that information needs to be integrated. The dean rightly asks: “Where should I go to get information? What should I do when the results are different?” To the dean, the distinction between BI and IR is less and less clear, and in any case not that interesting.
One question of interest is where financial data comes into play. In the majority of institutions the IR function is organizationally located with or close to the Provost. However, in a significant number of cases, the IR function is located within the Planning & Budgeting function. Thus there is not a consistent pattern on where the financial data strength is housed. Sometime it’s in IR and sometimes it’s in BI. But in either case the need for integration of financial data with other data drives us to bring these groups into significant alignment.
Secondly, the pressures to move towards a culture of data-informed decision-making, and the general pressures on the system of higher education, are enormous. If we in IR and BI are not directly involved in wrestling with these issues, then we will be decisively less relevant to our institutions. There are pressures as well to greatly expand our use of predictive analytics, most often around student success. This requires integration of data that is typically spread across multiple systems, and in many cases it is data that changes from day to day. This requires both BI skills and IR skills, working together.
In addition, there are the seemingly never-ending pressures to do more with less. We need to streamline the routine work whenever we can in order to wring out some capacity to do the value-added non-routine work. This, too, requires the skills of IR and BI, working together.
These pressures are substantial, but they also represent opportunity. Institutions generally have not yet figured out how to do all this. Maybe we can, and that’s an exciting prospect.
What makes it hard?
BI and IR both work with data, and in many cases, pretty much the same data. Shouldn’t this bring the two functions together? Perhaps it’s a little like the statement that England and America are “two nations divided by a common language.”[1] They both work with data, but historically they look at it very differently. I see current forces pushing them together, but in the 18 interviews I conducted I found there are real differences between them, including their perceptions of each other. Generally speaking they are skeptical of each other’s methods and motives. And even in those situations where the groups are working well together now, it hasn’t been easy to get there.
My hypothesis was that these differences are in part due to structural factors, such as assigned responsibility, location within the organization, etc., and in part due to cultural factors, such background, values, etc. The specifics of a current situation, including organizational history and the people themselves, are likely predominant in any given instance. However, there are also pretty clear patterns that emerged.
Structurally, these two functions report up differently in their institutions. While their responsibilities are now starting to overlap significantly, this has not been the case in the past. They have tended to work with different data for different purposes that serves different constituencies. Also, notably, IR is a much older and more established function. As more than one IR person put it, “We were doing BI before there was BI!”
The structural differences are pretty significant, but the cultural ones may be even more telling. This gets into the areas of identity and values, and can lead to conflict that is harder to root out. For example, the two function’s educational backgrounds and levels differ significantly. IR staff very commonly holds Masters Degrees and PhD’s. Also they have different career backgrounds and career prospects. BI has opportunities in the private sector, for example. BI seeks to make data available to broad groups of people and may not always understand the meaning of the data. IR is very sensitive to how data are interpreted or misinterpreted, and past experience has taught them to be cautious. IR people say that the “data are useful” while BI people say that the “data is useful” (both are correct, by the way, but be aware of what kind of bar you’ve walked into before ordering your data drink!). BI people think that IR people manipulate data, while IR people know that official reporting requires conformance to official reporting definitional rules, which transactional systems may not always honor.
It goes on. I see discernable differences in about 20 different structural and cultural dimensions. But the most important and certainly hopeful fact is that these differences all make sense when you step outside. In higher education we greatly value diversity of all kinds, and here we see an opportunity to practice that value.
How can we approach collaboration?
I think there is no magic here. This is hard work, but certainly not impossible. A few institutions have taken fairly dramatic steps, and these have clearly been very hard on the institutions, and nuanced understanding has likely been sacrificed. Perhaps that’s the best way at certain times. At Arizona we are taking a more evolutionary approach, and attempting to consciously move in the direction of bringing these groups together both organizationally and in terms of work practices and relationships. We have a vision of where we want to be in three years, and the steps to get there are largely practical steps.
The foundational step is awareness. It’s awareness of these structural and cultural differences, and the reasons for these differences. But it’s also awareness of the forces at work that are pushing us to work together. People can sometimes lose sight of the bigger forces at play, and genuinely fail to see why yesterday’s approach may not work tomorrow. It’s our job to help people see this.
One of the most effective tactics (and a reason why we want to do this anyway) is to work together successfully on common projects. It has to be real. It has to be projects where both BI and IR are needed, and where both get appropriate credit. As we know project work is difficult. Projects need to be managed carefully, and be strongly and visibly supported by senior administration. There has to be a reason for people to work together that they can see and feel. But the shared experience of working together successfully on something big is powerful. When we finish we get to say, “We did that!”
There are other things we need to do that contribute greatly to coming together. In our case, where we have combined the groups, we need to have a common physical work space, common processes (when appropriate), common office infrastructure, and common data space. As much as we can we need to get there in a way that doesn’t support the perception of there being winners and losers. This is difficult, and we are rightly suspicious when we hear that A and B are merging—is it a merger, or a takeover?
Conclusion
Indeed this is difficult work, but we need to do it, and we can do it. One final thought—there should be a human touch on all of this, with a sense of humor and a sense of balance! As a friend likes to say, “There’s a lot of stuff, but after all it’s just stuff.”