N.C. Community Colleges Get Better, Faster Data Access

The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS), is a network of 59 institutions in communities throughout the state, with a central Community Colleges System Office (CCSO) located in Raleigh, N.C. The CCSO provides administrative support, program leadership, financial oversight, budgeting, legislative support, accountability measurement, research and analysis to the staff and to further the goals of the community colleges.

The task of manually collecting and assembling data from all the colleges and other outside agencies for Federal and North Carolina General Assembly annual reporting often took several months to complete. When the frequency of these reports changed from an annual to a semester basis, the CCSO no longer could compile the data in the time required. This caused a non-compliance situation, endangering program funding and grants. They realized quickly they needed to expand their current data warehousing capabilities and include timely ad-hoc reporting.

Dunn Solutions Group was selected to build upon NCCCS’s initial implementation of the data warehouse and manage the second phase of the project.

To begin, the data warehouse was expanded to provide Windows and Web-based access to standard and ad-hoc reports from a variety of programs and facilities. This provided a solid foundation for the mandated reporting that was critical to determining eligibility for Federal program funding and grants.

Then additional subject areas were incorporated into the data warehouse, and the ad-hoc and standard reporting analysis capabilities were extended and enhanced. Concurrently, Dunn Solutions Group completed basic and advanced end-user training for the skilled knowledge workers in locations throughout the state.

By implementing an expanded data warehousing system the CCSO was able to...

  • access data immediately in ways not previously possible.
  • generate ad-hoc reports in minutes, rather than days – or months.
  • deliver timely reporting to Federal government and the State General Assembly.