Discover how this University drive growth & streamline operations

The Problem

The Education sector can suffer with obsolete, poor data quality due to lack of resources to update old data. There are also some universities who have outdated IT systems, making it difficult to maintain their database with accurate information.

With over 4,000 members of staff and 40,000 students, this university in the North West is one of the largest in the UK, as such, they face the challenge of managing a considerable amount of data and ensuring it is highly accurate and up-to-date.

They wanted to achieve data that was compatible to Raiser’s Edge software which is similar to an Access Database. We were flexible in our approach as we can tailor our own systems so that the files can be seamlessly merged with Raiser’s Edge at no additional cost.

The University do an annual cleanse of their data which includes important information such as name, address and a unique ID. We provided a number of small samples of what we could do for them before going ahead with the full service.

The Solution

Firstly we assessed the quality of the data using our Data Optimisation solution, which is a cleaning process designed to improve the quality of records by adding in missing fields and removing errors and inconsistencies. This involves conducting data quality assessments with a wide range of datasets to enrich and suppress the existing database.

Following this process, the University was provided with a file containing all of the duplicate records as well as a report on the statistics for the file run. This enabled them to truly understand the amount of duplicate records in their data. In addition all non-matched addresses were then replaced with the correct one and deceased records were flagged.

The next element of the process was to ensure that the data could be seamlessly integrated back into their internal systems. The client needed a more bespoke approach to the return files, to make importing into their database less time consuming.

All in all, Hopewiser supplied:

• Deceased files
• Goneaways files
• Updates to addresses
• Non-matched addresses for further investigation on a more granular level

Conclusion

As a result of Hopewiser’s Data Quality Services, the University was able to streamline internal operations and access high quality information, giving a clear view of the data.

“Just to let you know, all your hard work certainly paid off at our end – it was so much easier, simpler and quicker to import our attributes this time! That was such a relief – thanks so much for all your hard work on the formatting.” Head of Development Operations, University

“Having worked with this client, forming a relationship with them and experiencing the vast amount of data they deal with, we have a greater understanding of the challenges faced by many public sector organisations when it comes to maintaining data quality.” Lisa, Bureau Analyst, Hopewiser.

If you have any questions or want high quality data, Just ASK us here and start your data transformation journey!