Yale Goes from 5 Weeks to 5 Days to Publish Dashboards
Yale University
Marcia Schels, Director of Enterprise Systems
Marcia Schels serves as Director of Enterprise Systems for two administrative departments at Yale University. The Office of Development focuses on fundraising, and the Office of the Secretary oversees a variety of programs, including public safety and the Association of the Alumni. At the 2010 Tableau Customer Conference, we talked with Marsha about how Tableau is helping Yale break down information silos and raise 3.5 billion dollars.
| Tableau: | You provide IT systems leadership for two major administrative departments at Yale. Is there a lot of crossover, or do you pick different solutions for each of them? |
| Marcia: | In the past, everything was pretty much just best-of-breed in each area. We had systems and applications to support each area, but we did not have a common reporting methodology. Actually, we used Oracle Hyperion products and Pro BI solutions, but we had implemented differently for different departments, and we were having trouble producing many forms of information in a quick manner. Development time was very long. |
| Tableau: | How would you go about the process if you tried to extract different reports from different groups? |
| Marcia: | That wasn’t really working out. Most of the time, the reports were very set for a particular department and then we had to look across – the typical silo situation. Also, the volume of data is increasing, so the database was getting bigger and bigger, and it was taking longer and longer to run reports. We looked at other options, and we purchased Essbase and that’s actually how we discovered Tableau. Essbase has a product that they resell called Visual Explorer which is actually Tableau. When we realized that Tableau existed and could go against any type of database or source of information, we quickly decided that was better. So, now we can actually connect and see dashboards going into multiple sources of data all at one. |
| Tableau: | So, what types of things are you analyzing in the different areas? |
| Marcia: | Yale is currently undergoing a 3.5 billion dollar capital campaign, and we are using Tableau to produce a dashboard on the results of the campaign in all various areas. We are trying to develop a front end for fund raisers to be able to get all the information they need to get on their prospects in a more cohesive manner than having to look at a list and go to various websites. So, that’s on the fundraising side.
On the Association of the Alumni, we are doing analysis on who is attending the reunions. Yale has a high level of participation, but they want to be able to look at the demographics of who’s coming, where they are coming from, what classes, what occupations, all different things. It’s exciting to be able to do all that analysis with Tableau. It’s getting started very soon. |
| Tableau: | So, instances working on incidences over a period of time occurrence? |
| Marcia: | Yes, and using the mapping techniques. |
| Tableau: | What are some of the benefits you've seen as an organization since you started using Tableau? |
| Marcia: | Tableau has improved productivity for my developers. The campaign dashboard took about five people five months to produce in other tools and a matter of days with Tableau. So, you can see the savings we can have with that. On the end user side, the fund raisers would have had to go to various different reports, various different websites, and look up things for themselves. Now it’s all in one consolidated place. With the click of a button, they can pull together all the information they want to get a real picture of the prospects and to be able to target who they should be talking to. With the visual representation, Tableau quickly shows you were you should be focusing your attention. |
| Tableau: | Have you started tracking on the other side of that? The results, for instance? |
| Marcia: | We’ve been looking at the reporting, but so far it’s looking at what’s the experience today, how we’ve done. What we want to look at now is more forward-looking and predictive things, like did this particular type of registration work well and on what type of people? What would we expect to happen if we did it again or tailored it a bit? I think that the way we can interact with the data with Tableau will lead us to those answers, and that’s when it’s going to really pay off.
We are in this 3.5 billion dollar campaign, and we have three years left. Of course we would like to meet the goals, so we would really like to know how much we should be able to raise from our prospects along that timeline. |
| Tableau: | When you started working with Tableau, what were some of your first impressions of it? |
| Marcia: | I was blown away. It was by far the easiest to learn and the most powerful product that I had ever seen. And I have been working with data since 1984, and I’ve tried different products over that time. It’s a really passion of mine, working with information to make better business decisions, and I think Tableau is the king of that. |
| Tableau: | Have you talked about Tableau with other departments at Yale? |
| Marcia: | Yes! Like I mentioned, we have our own silos like most organizations, but we are working very hard to break that down and have more standard products that we use so that everyone is not re-inventing the wheel. I certainly go around and put up a poster of Tableau at Yale. |
| Tableau: | Do you think Tableau is really an instigator for breaking this down because of its capabilities and the interface and visibility it provides? |
| Marcia: | Yes. It is, and I will tell you what else it is an instigator for. It is getting leadership to be able to access information that can help them to make better decisions because it’s so easy to use. In the past, a lot of our business intelligence systems were not used because they were at the officer level. But Tableau is definitely a tool that anyone who has a computer can figure out. |
| Tableau: | Have you had people from the higher levels coming to request Tableau solutions? |
| Marcia: | Yes, we’re still in the process of rolling some of these things out, but what happens is that that soon as they get some of it, it gets the process going and they ask for more. I’m looking forward to giving the Secretary of the University Bureau a dashboard where she can see things from all of the different operations, so that she can see views on campus security, views on how well the police are doing, and views on how well our websites are doing for the dissemination of information – hits on various online magazines, for instance. And perhaps a view on where Yale students are visiting internationally. I think for her, if she could see that diversity of programs and information in one view, she could really spot trends and monitor performance. |
| Tableau: | If you were going to recommend Tableau to someone, how would you explain what it does and how would you sell it? |
| Marcia: | I would say that Tableau is a product that allows you to access any source of information and multiple sources of information at the same time. You get a dashboard type display, and you can develop that so quickly that you won’t have to worry about the develop time anymore. You can worry about the impact it is going to have on your business and on your decisions. You are going to have people getting excited and actually starting to relay the information and use it in ways they never thought it possible. |
