EnlightenEd

The Secret To Ensuring Data Quality in Your SIS

by | Oct 2, 2018

The Secret To Ensuring Data Quality in Your SIS

On a scale of 1 to 10, how worried are you about the imminent rise of robot overlords?

 

If you’re at a 9 or a 10, then you may not want to read this blog post. In fact, you may actually want to take up yoga, or maybe cut back on the caffeine or something.

 

But if you’re at 8 or below, then it should be safe to ask yourself the following questions:

 

  1. First of all, how automated is the admissions process at your institution?

 

Are student applications uploaded directly into your systems without any interventions from staff? Are all of your databases and programs integrated in such a way that data flows between them without the need for manual transfers? Are there bottlenecks because certain steps in the process need to be done by a human – like comparing or verifying huge amounts of data?

 

  1.  And then secondly, how would you rate the quality of your institution’s data?

 

Do you know for a fact that there are no duplicate student records in your database? How much of an opening does your admissions process give human error to miss details or make mistakes? Do your current apps and systems have the ability to catch or prevent any such mistakes?  

 

We’re not saying it’s time to surrender to the robots – but we are saying you need to take a good hard look at which parts of your admissions process are most efficiently handled by tech solutions, and which parts truly do require manual human involvement, and then adjust your admissions process accordingly.

 

Data quality is a crucial aspect of every facet of a higher ed institution’s functioning.  But with the massive amounts of student data needing to be checked and processed on an ongoing basis, it would take a massive commitment of resources to handle it all manually. Automated solutions definitely speed up the admissions process, but without human involvement, they don’t have the capacity to prevent certain errors or duplicate records. And the various mash-ups of these two options that university IT departments often attempt simply end up slowing things down or causing more mistakes.

 

So what’s the answer? A tech solution that handles the time-consuming, nitty-gritty parts of the process, and then hands it off to your humans at critical junctions to make important judgements.

 

The answer is IDMatch.

 

IDMatch is a fully-customizable, turnkey, automated solution for higher ed institutions to check student applications against existing student records, in order to eliminate duplicates and filter based on the data of their choosing, and then integrate into their SIS.

 

Humans call the shots during the initial set-up, when the data fields that student applications will be filtered through are chosen based on an institution’s unique needs. Then IDMatch takes over, comparing new student data to existing student records in your systems, and creating lists of applicants who may be duplicates. At this point, humans take the wheel again, clicking through the intuitive interface to see whether they are in fact doubles or not, and making decisions about how to handle each case. Then, it’s back to IDMatch for the final integration into your SIS.

 

An add-on module to N2N’s Illuminate API Management Platform, IDMatch also brings with it the capability to seamlessly integrate all your data, in every app, system, and database, and automate its transfer between them.

 

So if you’re looking for a way to automate as much of the admissions process as possible, but get human eyes on the data to ensure quality – and do so without slowing things down or providing opportunities for mistakes to be made, then give us a call today. The robots are waiting.

 

Just kidding, just kidding – we humans at N2N would be happy to walk you through a free demo anytime.


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