Higher Ed Powerhouse Empowered With Data

Our higher ed client was unable to access all the insights it desired with its existing CRM

Using a combination of Azure Data Factory, Slate, and Tableau, the client is now able to easily gain insights through a streamlined, low-code solution

Our client is a private college located in New York. Their Department of Alumni Affairs and Development uses Slate, a popular higher education content relationship management (CRM) software, to manage their giving data. Giving data includes donation and endowment information, along with donor details. While Slate provides basic reports, it does not have the capability to manage complex requests. Due to Slate’s reporting limitations, the Department was unable to easily view complex insights about their donors and their contributions, particularly regarding individual and collective donating patterns year over year.

Chateaux was tasked with providing insights into alumni data through data integration.

Chateaux created ways to answer complex queries by transforming and moving data from Slate to Tableau using Azure Data Factory.

Previously, the client was only able to answer basic questions about their data, such as:

• What is the year-to-date summary gift data?
• How much did you give last year?
• How much did a donor give last year, the year before that, and how much did they give year to date of this fiscal year?

Now, insights are attainable for more complex questions, including:

• For people who donated last year, was that donation an increase or decrease this year?
• How many people who donated last year did not donate the prior year, but did donate sometime in the last eight years?

Instead of running multiple reports in Slate that would need to be manually compared and scrutinized, users now have one Tableau dashboard where they can easily retrieve the information they seek.

Through data integration using Azure Data Factory to connect Slate’s source data with Tableau, our client can now:

• Uncover new analytic insights including data trends and relationships for better predictions and decision making
• Leverage custom reporting opportunities
• Visualize data with an easy-to-use, interactive reporting interface
• Retrieve information with faster access to data–and spend time gaining insights, not opening massive spreadsheets

The Azure Data Factory infrastructure can also handle ad-hoc requests to easily bring in new or modified data for their reporting needs from stakeholders. Plus, hours formerly spent in board meetings compiling and creating reports using old systems and processes are now a thing of the past. The new process allows for timely new requests so that once the data is in Azure Data Factory then the Tableau report can be available shortly after with near-real-time data available thanks to nightly batch jobs.

The client is a private college located in New York.