Information Builders' Analytics Helps Florida Atlantic University Become the State's Top-Performing Public University

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Nov 2, 2016) - Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, data integrity, and integration solutions, today announced that Florida Atlantic University (FAU) used the WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform to meet the state's performance-based funding (PBF) objectives. As a result of FAU's journey to define new metrics, develop dashboards, and implement InfoApps™, the Florida Board of Governors (BOG), which oversees the State University System, ranked FAU as the top-performing public university in the state of Florida.¹

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FAU, a four-year college in southeast Florida that serves more than 30,000 students, relies on both public funding and tuition to support its mission. Recently, the State of Florida adopted performance-based funding, which meant the traditional enrollment metrics that colleges had been tracking for years were replaced by outcome metrics such as graduation rate, employment, and student success in the classroom. Like many public higher education institutions, FAU had to find ways to improve and document student outcomes and measures.

To tackle this issue, FAU used Information Builders' WebFOCUS to automate the complex compliance reporting scenarios that are necessary for performance-based funding, as well as to operationalize its PBF strategy.

"Information Builders supplied sophisticated analytic technology to drive our predictive models," said Mehran Basiratmand, chief technology officer at Florida Atlantic University. "Our BI and analytics system enables instructors, advisors, faculty, and other staff members to identify at-risk students while there is still time to get them on the right track to meet personal and institutional goals. WebFOCUS has been extremely instrumental generating reports that document critical metrics, such as student progress towards graduation."

Information Builders' analytic technology provides information to faculty and staff about the status of each student, helping the university to promote students more effectively and meet their scholastic and career goals. Hundreds of staff members access a WebFOCUS portal to analyze data from the university's financial management system and student information systems, staying abreast of crucial business and financial trends and enabling them to plan accordingly.

"To be successful at performance-based funding, with its complex rules and formulas, institutions need flexible analytic tools, not rigid packaged solutions," said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. "WebFOCUS is well suited for this kind of application for a number of reasons, including its ability to embed business rules into reports, dashboards, and InfoApps. We are honored to play a role in FAU's success."

To learn more about the benefits realized by implementing BI to support its PBF, join us for our webcast, "Florida Atlantic University: Maximizing Performance-Based Funding in Higher Education."

About Florida Atlantic University
Florida Atlantic University is a public university located in Boca Raton, Florida, with five satellite campuses located in the Florida cities of Dania Beach, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, Jupiter, and in Fort Pierce at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. FAU belongs to the 12-campus State University System of Florida and serves South Florida, which has a population of more than five million people. The university offers more than 180 undergraduate and graduate degree programs within its 10 colleges in addition to a professional degree from the College of Medicine. Programs of study cover arts and humanities, the sciences, medicine, nursing, accounting, business, education, public administration, social work, architecture, engineering, and computer science.

About Information Builders
Information Builders provides solutions for business intelligence (BI), analytics, data integration, and data quality that help drive performance improvements, innovation, and value. Through one set of powerful products, we enable organizations to serve everyone -- analysts, non-technical users, even partners, customers, and citizens -- with better data and analytics. Our dedication to customer success is unmatched with thousands of organizations relying on us as their trusted partner. Founded in 1975, Information Builders is headquartered in New York, NY, with global offices, and remains one of the largest independent, privately held companies in the industry. Visit us at informationbuilders.com, follow us on Twitter at @infobldrs, like us on Facebook, and visit our LinkedIn page.

¹ "FAU Rockets to Top of BOG Performance Funding Model," Florida Atlantic University, March 2016.