K-State Calls on Power BI to Improve Research Capabilities
Higher education institutes aren’t just breeding grounds for education, they are platforms for some of the world’s most powerful discoveries. From advances in cancer research to the origins of internet architecture and discovery, university research has had a profound effect on modern society. Though many universities meet the basic criteria for being considered a research institute such as having a research center, undergraduate research opportunities, and federal funding, only a select few are in the upper echelon and considered among the best in the world. With the help of Microsoft’s Power BI tools, Kansas State University aims to be in the pantheon of the greatest public research universities in the United States— and beyond.
As Kansas’ first public higher learning institution, “K-State” was established in 1863, right on the heels of “the Sunflower State” joining the union as a free state. As the first fully-endowed land-grant institution in the United States, K-State has been awarded over $230 million in grants, loans, scholarships, and work-study programs for its 25,000-plus students across its four campuses. Recognized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as one of the nation’s top 115 universities with the highest research activity, K-State has made it a goal to break the threshold and join the top-50 ranks of prestigious schools such as Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, and NYU. Implementing an enterprise-grade data analytics platform with Power BI was the school’s first step in the right direction.
As the proprietors of all information technology throughout the school, K-State’s Information Systems Office recognized the need to undergo a digital transformation to give each research division the ability to make decisions that were not only better, but quicker, more informed, and data-driven. The analytics team painstakingly put time and effort into fortifying their computing systems, which brought about some improvements, but ultimately proved to be insufficient in helping them achieve their goals.
Despite system enhancements, the analytics team found it difficult and time consuming when attempting to find correlations between multiple sets of data. Furthermore, they found their reporting capabilities to produce inconclusive results when it came to factors such as quality, integrity, timeliness, and security. After concluding that even more help was needed to push them closer to their goals, the analytics team set out to explore their options. Upon researching some of the universities they considered successful and in the upper tier of research institutions, K-State’s analytics team found the one thing they had in common was the use of a unified, enterprise-grade data analytics platform. After much deliberation, it was decided that Microsoft’s data analytics platform would help carry them to the promise land— and it has proven to be a wise choice.
“The main attraction to Power BI is that its structure directly aligns with our own philosophy for coordinating assessment: rather than dictating, we want to provide a basic structure and tools that enable users to achieve their own goals.” –Miriam Clark, Business Intelligence Expert at Kansas State University
With guidance from trusted educators from other universities, K-State quickly discovered the benefits of implementing a unified system. Power BI gives decision makers self-service analytics with tools that offer flexibility and produce data that’s applicable and visual. Reporting has become easier to run, more accessible, more comprehensive, and automated, which eradicates the need to use tech and analytics experts on a regular basis. Power BI has also given the school more effective collaboration between teams and departments and provides a platform for educating and strengthening the Wildcat community at-large. And best of all, K-State has experienced all these benefits while staying within their desired budget. The school hopes to reach its top-50 research list goal by 2025, and with Power BI helping them to develop a solid data platform, they are on pace to get there faster than expected.
To learn more about K-State’s objectives, challenges, and how they are overcoming them to build upon the reputation of their already well-established research facilities using Power BI, read the case study.
