Automating The Data Reporting System Of A Leading Technical University Through Advanced Data Visualization

A case study that demonstrates how Sparklore’s data visualization solutions automated the reporting system and reduced the data reporting time by 90%  for a leading technical university

Client:  

The Client is a leading technical university that offers undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees. Most of the programs on offer are online.

Approach:

The client was using Google Analytics in addition to an in-house CRM system to store and maintain customer details. As they are primarily an online educational organization, they depend on these platforms for bulk of their leads.

They primarily leveraged Google Analytics (GA) to capture customer data. They were sourcing both online and offline data from GA before migrating it to Excel spreadsheets. Online data included leads generated from the chat applet on the website. Offline data, on the other hand,  was stored through call centres.

Business Challenges

When the university approached Sparklore, they were struggling to streamline their manual data reporting system. The evolving dynamics of an online system implied that they could no longer depend on a manual reporting system. This was affecting their efficiency, which reflected in their escalating data reporting time. Despite repeated efforts, they were confronting the following challenges:

• The reports were static and not dynamic
• No insights could be obtained from these reports
• Inability to collate and combine data from different sources
• No information could be gathered from Sales/CRM data
• GA prevented the client from fetching personal customer information
• Difficulty in sourcing specific data including:
  • the Channel used by customers
  • the type of device used for lead generation

Business Solution

To reduce data reporting time and increase their overall efficiency, the university needed a trusted partner who would take complete responsibility of automating their existing reporting system. They realized that they needed to look no further than Sparklore’s interactive data visualization solution that would not only transform their manual reporting system, but also deliver actionable insights on data about customers.

Approach and Strategy  

After receiving email requests from the university, Sparklore’s team of experienced data engineers observed that the data from both GA and CRM had to be mapped through a unique userID by running a custom JavaScript query. After conducting a well-calibrated analysis of the client’s specialized requirements, the data visualization experts put forward Alteryx as the ideal solution.

Core Solutions

Upon confirmation from the client that their data was stored on FTP, Sparklore leveraged Alteryx dashboards to input the same. They implemented the following solution:  

• Access to GA data was gained using the Google Analytics API
• A workflow was created to automate the mapping for both sets of data
• The workflow allowed fresh data to get appended on a weekly basis without any duplicity
• Alteryx facilitated the creation of a ‘.tde’ file that updated their Tableau reports directly on the server
• After successfully automating the system, it was tested across multiple data sets in collaboration with the client

Business Outcomes:

• Time taken to report data was reduced by 90%
• The entire manual data reporting system was automated within 2 weeks
• 100% visibility over the lifecycle of every lead – from lead generation and appointments to enrolments and the starting dates of courses
• 100% clarity on all channel contributing to leads
• A drill-down and drill through approach to deliver better insights about their leads