Telling Belmont's Story through Data and Visualization
IRSA’s Business Intelligence team (BI) uses a combination of systems, processes, and technologies to organize and transform university data into meaningful information to support decision-makers and drive the university forward. BI offers advanced visualizations to view, analyze, and utilize complex data to enable strategic decision-making. The Business Intelligence team closely follows university Data Governance guidelines to provide a foundation of trustworthy data that is gathered with accuracy and integrity.
Data and Presentation Tools
Belmont Analytics (BA) is Belmont’s data warehouse. The power of Belmont Analytics is the ability to combine data from multiple database systems into an optimized, integrated format that offers a more complete view of Belmont’s data and gives greater insight into the operations of the university. BA uses a star schema data warehouse design and multi-dimensional OLAP cube structures that provides powerful, interactive data visualization options. Data from Belmont analytics is displayed through Pyramid and Argos.
Data sources for Belmont Analytics include:
- Ellucian Banner
- Slate (Admissions)
- AEFIS (Program Assessment and Faculty Qualifications)
- Recruit (Admissions archived data)
- Blackboard (LMS archived data)
Belmont Analytics Roadmap
- Adirondack - Undergraduate Housing Applications – Early 2024
- Canvas LMS – Q2 2024
Pyramid is the primary visualization tool used with Belmont Analytics. This tool provides an interactive visual display of Belmont data. Users can easily interact with dashboards, drilling into specific data, and selecting the dimensional descriptors by which data are divided to better understand data and make informed decisions.
Data marts currently available in Belmont Analytics:
Admissions
Course Information
Financial Aid
Human Resources
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Pyramid Roadmap
Student
Student Financials
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Argos is Belmont’s most widely used reporting tool. It is capable of reporting from any database and currently has connections to Banner and Belmont Analytics as well as several other systems on campus. Argos provides the ability to view data in several ways including displaying data on the screen, in a comma separated values file (CSV) or as a formatted PDF file.
Argos connections include
- Ellucian Banner production database
- Belmont Analytics
- DWSN – Nightly clone of Banner for reporting
Data shown in dashboards and reports are documented in the University’s Data Cookbook. In the Cookbook users can search by keyword to find a particular report that meets their needs. Each report document shows the purpose of the report, the business terms (data) included in it, and other helpful information to understand the report's output.