Action Analytics: Making Analytics Strategic, Pervasive and Understandable
We Begin With Several Premises
Colleges and universities are awash in data, much
of which is hiding in plain sight.
Campuses need optimized data resources, new analytics applications, and
fresh approaches to accountability and decision making if they are to meet the
needs of their publics. They need
to leverage these new capacities if they are to innovate and lift out of
recession.
So-called “business intelligence” and “analytics”
are understood by a small cadre of technologists and institutional researchers –
this remains a “geek” issue. Some
practitioners refer to these new practices as business intelligence, higher
education informatics, or performance measurement and improvement. We prefer the term, Action Analytics ®, to describe the next generation of analytics
practices, so powerful that they don’t just enable action, they demand it.
Action analytics have the potential to support new
approaches to decision making and accountability, and to guide institutional
leadership and campus communities in addressing the challenge of lifting out of
recession. To do so, analytics
must be broadly understood, requiring institutions to:
- raise the “analytics IQ” of campus leaders, staff, and faculty;
- progressively develop the capacity of end users;
- proceed on a migration path to “analytics for the masses;”
- optimize data, information, and analytic resources and practices;
and
- leverage analytics to pursue a mixed strategy of operational
efficiency, innovation, reimagining, and new revenues to reclaim financial
sustainability.
This Webinar is designed
to address these issues.
Webinar Program
The Webinar program will suggest how institutional
leadership can make analytics strategic, pervasive, and understandable. The agenda shall answer the following
questions:
- What is driving the analytics imperative?
- What are the analytics challenges facing institutions?
- What is an institutional map of data sources and analytics?
- What is the level of readiness for analytics on campus?
- What are the reporting, query, and analytics needs of campuses?
- How does one make action Analytics a strategic change initiative?
- How does one know when analytics are strategic, pervasive, and
understandable?
- How does one leverage analytics to lift a campus out of recession
and rediscover financial sustainability?
The Webinar will conclude with a question and
answer conversation.
The Presenter:
Donald M. Norris,
Ph.D., is President and Founder of Strategic
Initiatives, Inc., a management consulting firm in Herndon, Virginia,
that specializes in leading and navigating change, crafting and executing
strategy, and enhancing enterprise performance. He is recognized as a thought
leader and expert practitioner whose clients have included a blue-chip roster
of corporations, colleges and universities, and associations and other
non-profit organizations.
A Distinguished Consulting Career. Dr. Norris has
been consulting for over 35 years, the last 25 as a full-time consultant and
thought leader. He founded Strategic
Initiatives, Inc. 18 years ago. Driven by the emergence of the
Knowledge Economy and its higher standards of performance, he has guided dozens
of client organizations in realigning their visions, strategies, and plans to
face fundamental changes in their industries. Strategies have included
inventing groundbreaking approaches to strategic planning, the leveraging of
technology to enhance performance and reduce costs, and focusing on value as a
key performance indicator. Recently, he has guided a wide range of community colleges,
comprehensive universities, and research universities in assessing analytics
needs, crafting analytics strategies and building organizational capacity to
deploy and leverage analytics in support of lifting out of recession.
Consulting, Thought Leadership, and Trail-Blazing Publications. Dr. Norris has
blended consulting with thought leadership, as reflected in 20 books and
monograph, plus dozens of articles and presentations. His publications are
recognized as having shaped thinking and practice in a variety of fields:
organizational transformation, distance education and e-learning, and practices
and tools to enhance performance and build value. His most impactful works have been Transforming Higher Education:
A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, A Guide to
Planning for Change, Transforming e-Knowledge: A Revolution in Knowledge
Sharing, “Action Analytics: Measuring and Enhancing Performance
That Matters in Higher Education,” and “Competence 2.0: Education, Training,
and Workforce Development for the Post-Recession Economy.”
Action Analytics ®: Measuring and Enhancing Performance in
Higher Education. In particular, Dr. Norris has pioneered new methodologies
for measuring and enhancing performance in higher education and demonstrating
value to higher education’s stakeholders. He has led the way in leveraging
technology to reinvent academic and administrative processes that improve
productivity, reduce costs, and foster innovations that improve student success
and competitive positioning. Strategic Initiatives provides Action Analytics ®, a trail-blazing consulting service
that enables institutions and their partners and stakeholders to reap the
benefits of Web 2.0-enabled analytics that optimize the institution’s data,
information, and analytic resources in the pursuit of enhanced
performance. Action Analytics ®
provides “analytics for the masses” that enable institutions to extract and
utilize data from the full spectrum of data sources (ERP – Student, Finance,
Finance Aid, Human Resources, and Advancement - LMS, third-party operational
systems, Assessment, Shadow systems, and external data sources) and to “mashup”
analytic comparisons that have never been possible. Action analytics is key to positioning institutuions for
success, post-recession.
National Symposium
on Action Analytics. Dr. Norris is one of the co-founders of the National Symposium
on Action Analytics, co-sponsored by the Minnesota State Colleges and
Universities (MnSCU) and the Capella University in September 2009. He co-authored the White Papers for the
Symposium: Linking Analytics to Lifting out of Recession and Why
Action Analytics for Huigher Education. He is leading the formation of a community of practice on
Action Analytics and the the implementation of A National Agenda for
Action Analytics.
Strategic Planning, Executing Strategy, and Building
Organizational Capacity. Drs. Donald Norris and Nick Poulton recently wrote A Guide to Planning for Change, published by the
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). This book is the “go-to” resource for planners at
all levels and of all types. In
this book, Norris and Poulton provide graphics and examples of how to conduct
strategic, aligned, integrated planning that depends on analytics and alignment
tools to frame and execute institutional strategies. Dr. Norris has been working with a wide range of software
providers to mashup new, software-enabled solutions that allow institutions to
align strategies, actions, resources, measurement, and performance management
at the institutional, college, and departmental levels.
Education
and Honors. Dr.
Norris received a B.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics and an M.B.A. degree
from Virginia Tech. He earned a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher
Education at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the following
honorary societies: Phi Eta Sigma, Tau Beta Pi (Engineering), Omicron Delta
Kappa (Leadership), Phi Kappa Phi, Beta Gamma Sigma (Business), and Who’s Who
in American Colleges and Universities.