The Challenge

The American University of the Middle East (AUM), located in Egaila (Eqaila), is the biggest private university in Kuwait. The IT team at AUM relied on reports they developed in house– including using their own data mart – to meet their various reporting requirements. However, this process for developing and, if need be, changing reports proved to be tedious and extremely time consuming. IT was getting frustrated with the ongoing report requests and, at the same time, end users were not happy with the delays in getting their reports.

Reports play an important role at AUM, as nearly all their business decisions are based on the data found within them. AUM realized it needed an easier way to do reporting, and that it was time to invest in a professional enterprise reporting system.

The Solution

Being a Banner® by Ellucian user, American University of the Middle East turned to Ellucian for guidance. Their recommendation? Evisions Argos.

AUM proceeded to carefully evaluate the functional, technical, and cost aspects of Argos and other solutions AUM found suitable for their requirements. They found everything in Argos to be to their liking. Most appealing was how simple it was to use.

At the time of the evaluation, AUM intended to use Argos primarily for the IT team – to speed up the delivery of reports. However, during implementation and training, other departments realized how much the solution could benefit them. They then started working on meshing Argos with their reporting requirements. When they started building their own reports, they were further surprised – and happy – to learn how intuitive Argos’s graphical user interface is and how quickly they can generate reports.

Argos is now being used at multiple departments at AUM. Besides IT, the core users are Finance, Procurement, and Registration. Other departments making great use of Argos include: HR, Student Affairs, Admissions, and Academic Advancement. Since implementation, AUM’s uses for Argos have become manifold.

AUM has also taken advantage of Argos’s enterprise license model, which allows for unlimited users and licenses. It provides them the freedom of having multiple staff members use the solution without having to worry about additional licenses or fees. AUM has seen their user count almost double since the initial implementation of Argos.

The Schedule & Delivery feature in Argos enables the university to automatically distribute reports to specific end users, or to designated shared locations, at specific times so that those reports are ready to be viewed when needed.

The automation of reports has significantly improved AUM’s report productivity. Not only has Argos reduced the time it takes them to generate reports, but the quality of the reports themselves have been notably enhanced.