How One College District Empowered Staff with Reliable Data

The Challenge

Given the size and distributed nature of North Orange County Community College District (NOCCCD), there was a need for organization and reliable data. A centralized reporting environment did not exist and managing reporting solutions across multiple campuses with thousands of students and employees was not an easy task. With three large campuses, each with their own administrative offices, over 75,000 employees and students and no centralized reporting tool, access to reliable data became a growing challenge. NOCCCD’s reporting strategy was very decentralized, leaving individuals to handle their own reports. When a department would create a report, the central IT staff at NOCCCD was often unaware of the report and could not verify the accuracy of the information on the report. The report that was created could only be used for that specific department at that specific campus. It was clear that the “fend for yourself” strategy was not going to suffice. NOCCCD needed a way to create a single report that multiple campuses could use and get a reliable single source of information.

Being a multi-campus college district, NOCCCD faced problems with the distribution of information. There was a disparity of the capabilities between the different campuses and there was wasted effort, time and money trying to work around the inefficiency of their reporting. NOCCCD was in need of a way to effectively distribute, not only the reports themselves between campuses, offices and departments, but also enable secure access to the databases containing needed information.

The Solution

Until Argos, there was not a single suitable solution that would meet the many disparate needs of the district. After seeing Argos, they knew that they had found the answer. There was little, if any, debate over whether or not to use the Argos Enterprise Reporting Solution since NOCCCD was already using other products from Evisions. This past business relationship with Evisions allowed NOCCCD to consider Evisions a reliable and trusted partner.

After the decision to purchase Argos was made, NOCCCD immediately began developing training materials and sample DataBlocks for over 300 users. The installation of Argos was quick; it took NOCCCD approximately two hours to install Argos on a basic Windows 2000 network. In a short period of time, they were able to access their databases and begin building DataBlocks for report creation.

NOCCCD personnel found Argos extremely easy to use. They were very happy and comfortable with the fact that the product is Windows-user friendly. Argos has a familiar GUI consisting of items like icons, drop-down boxes and an explorer-tree navigation. Since Argos is web based and easy to use, staff members throughout the district had no problem creating, viewing and running reports. In a matter of seconds, users could extract meaningful information from Banner, then export it into a myriad of formats, including, but not limited to: Adobe PDF, Microsoft Excel and HTML. Users could easily and automatically send out a report to any group or individual that they desired.

Argos provided NOCCCD with a way to organize and retrieve reliable data from their Banner database. Accessing information from their database has never been easier for NOCCCD. They were able to create one report template that has a drop down selection where each user can choose their own campus name and run their report getting the information they need. This cut down on duplicate reports as they no longer needed to create the same report for each campus. Argos was able to save NOCCCD time, money and hassle as well as allow them to implement a secure centralized reporting solution for their entire district. They now use Argos for financial reports, student information, transcripts and even for delivering registration appointment emails to students. Accessing reliable information is now as easy as opening a web browser and clicking a few boxes.