We closed our last blog entry with a table displaying a high-level matrix of KPIs, measures and dimensions for higher education institutions. A digital dashboard can portray the same tabular-format data in a more presentable way by displaying enrollment trends in colorful and meaningful graphs, alerts and notifications. Based on the analytical data presented, you will be able to understand your institution’s progress toward student enrollment goals. If your enrollment count does not meet the targeted goal for a particular term or academic year, the dashboard will trigger an alert indicating your current trend. This detailed and real-time analytical data will enable you to make more informed decisions for improving your enrollment trend in future terms.

Now let us look at a real-life scenario demonstrating this process. Let us say that in looking at your enrollment trend data displayed in the dashboard, you find that the Total Students count for African-American students has decreased for three consecutive terms. This is clearly an indication that you need to take certain actions to increase the African-American student enrollment in future terms. Having identified a problem, you can now take the precise action to fix it. In this case, your action might be to increase Financial Aid to African-American students in need, thus attracting more African-American candidates. This is what we call making an informed decision and taking effective action!

These are some key pointers that you need to take into consideration when defining KPIs, measures and dimensions:

1. Ensure that your KPIs are directly tied to your vision and mission statements
2. Ensure that you have set target goals
3. Ensure that the identified KPIs and measures are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound
4. Ensure that you have clearly defined each KPI and the benefits each can bring in managing institutional or campus performance
5. Ensure that the outlined KPIs, measures and dimensions are correctly mapped to business requirements

Over the last four blog entries, we have covered a strategic plan for defining KPIs, measures and dimensions for institutions of higher education. We have explored how to outline the KPIs tied to the institution’s vision and mission statements, how to measure the indicators and, finally, how to view the data elements related to measures. We hope these last few blog entries have provided you with the knowledge to begin designing your performance digital dashboard by identifying KPIs, measures and dimensions.

In our last blog entry, we worked through the identification of a pair of KPIs (Student Enrollment and Student Retention) and a set of measures related to Student Enrollment. The next step is identifying the dimensions. As we mentioned earlier, a dimension provides a means to view data elements that categorize the measures. In Data Warehousing design, dimensions contribute to a multidimensional view. The more dimensions, the greater the degree of data complexity. A multidimensional view enables you to slice and dice the data in many dimensions.

To help you define the dimensions associated with the measures identified above, you need to ask more questions! How do you want to view the enrollment trend? By Gender? Ethnicity? Academic Program? Term? Academic Year?

Here are some sample Dimensions you may use to view your data:

1. Gender – enables you to view enrollment by Female or Male head count
2. Ethnicity – enables you to view enrollment by ethnic group (African-American, Asian, Hispanic, etc.)
3. Academic Program – enables you to view enrollment by programs in which students are enrolled
4. Term – enables you to view enrollment by summer, fall and spring terms

Through our exercises, you have definitely laid the groundwork for identifying KPIs, measures and dimensions associated with your institution’s strategic goals.

The table below shows the high-level matrix of KPIs, measures and dimensions:

In our next blog entry, we will explain the use of digital dashboards to display the data represented in the tabular graphic above.