Key performance indicators in a high educational institution : a business intelligence approach

Abstract

Nowadays it is impossible for organizations to perform business activities without using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which includes computers, networks hardware and applications. Usually organizations use applications to perform their business processes storing daily transactional data related to products, customers and other entities into operational databases. Operational databases are embedded into applications in order to provide to users mechanisms to analyze data and get reports from different points of view. On the other hand, there is an increasing amount of data stored in operational databases, which can be used in analytical reports in order to help managers in decision making activities. In this context, it is important for organizations to evaluate if their applications work well and answer to the business requirements, as well as control all business processes in all organization´s levels, namely, produce reliable and high quality products, increase customers‟ satisfaction, improve application performances and the quality of services provided to costumers and collaborators. For this purpose, organizations have the opportunity to comply with ISO (International Organization of Standards) requirements, guidelines and instructions in order to improve quality of processes, and then achieve the Quality Management System (QMS) in different levels of the organization. In order to improve business performances in enterprises, decision makers define key performance indicators (KPI) for all (or some) business processes, which are based according to their strategies and goals, to evaluate, control and monitor services in order to improve business activities. For this purpose, Business Intelligence (BI) system demonstrates to be a possible solution to achieve this issue, allowing to integrate all enterprise operational data into a single data repository, get analytical data and generate reports. In general, a BI application is a meta-data driving tool, which has the capability to extract data from different systems and store them into a data repository (also called a data warehouse). It gives the opportunity to gather, store, filter and analyze huge volumes of data, providing to access historical data and develop set of reports in a quick and easy manner in order to support decision making activities. During the last years there are many examples of the application of BI systems in different types of organizations. BI systems can also be used in educational institutions. Applying BI in educational institutions gives the opportunity to integrate all data of educational processes into data warehouses, from where it is possible to deliver KPI reports for decision makers through the use of Online Analytical Processing tools. In this context, this project focuses to apply BI systems in a Quality Management System (ISO 9001 Standard) implemented in a high educational institution (Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo), with the objective to provide analytical tools to decision makers in order to evaluate, control, monitor and improve educational performances in all levels of the institution. With this work we have developed a BI application to provide IPVC decision makers with management tools to analyze data from QMS and get KPI reports with the purpose to satisfy the needs and expectations of IPVC managers.