Editors Prof. Amos DAVID & Prof. Charles UWADIA

Business Intelligence for Higher Education in Nigeria:

Towards Making Academic Data a Productive Advantage

AFOLABI Babajide Samuel

Department of Computer Science and Engineering Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria.

ADEBISI Adetunji John

Department of Computer Science and Engineering Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria.

Abstract: This paper aims at showcasing the relevance of using Business Intelligence (BI) systems in the Nigeria Higher Education Sector. Taking the BI systems specifics into consideration, the authors presents a suggested methodology for the systems creation and implementation in higher institutions. The considerations are focused on the objectives and functional areas of the BI in Higher Education. Hence, in this context the approach to be used while taking advantage of BI involves two interrelated phases, i.e. Data warehouse Creation and the Analysis. Huge part of this paper is keen to presenting the technology and the numerous advantages therein if embraced in the academic sector.

1. Introduction

Universities are undergoing a dramatic change triggered by disruptive technologies, competitive forces and changes to their funding model. Most institutions are only beginning to learn how to exploit the rich and untapped resource that is lying idle in their faculties and administration offices; admission records, academic performance statistics and financial data. This paper provides a valuable insight into the application of data driven business tools to provide management, staff, researchers, students, governments and industry partners with real time information about performance indicators, benchmarks and future directions. It provides a variety of perspectives from users, architects and managers of Business Intelligence systems operating in the unique Higher Education environment.

Schools, universities, higher education bodies, charities, libraries, and museums are under pressure today to maximize effectiveness and productivity on ever reducing budgets. Competition between these institutions is at all-time high forcing management to focus on increasing enrolment and registration whilst controlling costs. This paper unlocks the answers that improve decision making around enrolment, registrations, application, staff performance and more—that directly impact productivity—by making information more easily accessible to a wider audience.

The advent of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the recent years has presented an opportunity for higher institution administrators and the senior officials in the academia to change the

way education leverage and value their information assets. With

the ability to easy access of information mission delivery,

resource management and data dissemination can be raised to

levels which were previously not at all possible.

understand the citizen and the ability to use the resources are the

key factors in matching services to citizen needs.

At times, higher institution departments might have come across shortages or resources in one department and excess of resources in the other. This could be due to non-availability of proper data and facilities to disseminate information. Even if institution departments are computerized and networked more for the purpose of Internet usage and mail transfer, the information available in one department, which possess the data could not be utilized in other department. This is because the information is stored in different formats, in different platforms and in heterogeneous different data base systems.

By deploying the Business Intelligence Model; institution of higher

learning in Nigeria, can not only maximize access to information, but also can bid farewell to the massive paper trail often associated with various schools. Rather than providing non-detailed information to

uninterested constituents, the schools can now direct the right information to the right people at the right time. Further, the enterprise-wide information can be an asset to the institution of higher learning as well as to the entire population. This will help them in detailed micro level analysis and decision-making.

2. Business Intelligence and Decision Making

Business-intelligence has proven to be an effective means of improving the decision-making within an organization. While traditionally applied to profit making private companies BI has recently been applied to public institutions as well. The authors present a case study of the application of BI to a Higher Education in Nigeria. As a majority of the population in Nigeria who are illiterates are gradually getting out of their ignorance and transforming their lives, improving their skills and knowledge the educational institution is becoming so large thereby catering for all in the new emerging system will be a big challenge to the government and the entire academia without taking advantage of substantial data available at their disposal to enhance productivity. Further, still there are some institutions, which are not accessible and do not have data repository. For the entire population to be educative and innovative, how to communicate and compete

effectively with their counterparts across the border when need arise, Higher institutions in Nigeria has to have a detailed working strategy based on facts, for its better utilization, by taking advantage of the data available to them. In the institution of higher learning environment, the cost of providing infrastructure would be a big challenge. The costs of new technologies get distributed and in comparison to the value generated, it is worthwhile to invest in such infrastructure only when all the three participants effectively put it into use.

3. Higher Education in Nigeria

The role of education in human development cannot be over emphasized. It has been described as an important tool in any human society, which makes man to develop faster than other creatures. Education is the bedrock of all human sectors – political, medical, agricultural, security, etc. This perhaps makes true the saying that, no nation can rise above the quality of education its citizens receive. Generally, Education aims at: careful observation of the given conditions to see what are the means available for reaching the end and to discover the hindrances in the way; it suggests the proper order or sequence in the use of the means; it makes choice of alternatives possible, because we can predict the outcome of acting this way or that way and then compare the value of the two courses of actions before passing judgment upon their relative desirability. It is an instrument of change; and it is an instrument of innovation and invention. The creativity, resourcefulness and imaginative abilities of learners are sharpened as they go through various educational programs (Itedjere, 1997; Whawo, 1997).

The five national objectives, which are: a free and democratic society; a just and egalitarian society; a united, strong and self-reliant nation; a great and dynamic economy; and a land full of bright opportunities for all citizens (Federal Government of Nigeria, 2004), cannot be achieved without education. This perhaps may have informed the belief that education is an instrument of change. Hence, education must of necessity be geared towards the inculcation of the following:

 respect for the worth and dignity of the individual.



faith in man’s ability to make rational decisions

 acquisition of competences necessary for self-reliance.

Fig. 1: Nigeria Higher Education Structure, Source: http://eae.alberta.ca

It is in line with the above philosophy that education in Nigeria is directed towards self-realization, better human relationship, individual and national efficiency, effective citizenship, national consciousness, national unity, social, cultural, economic, political, scientific and technological progress (Federal Government of Nigeria, 2004). Accordingly, Omoregie (2010), reports that the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS), which is the Nigerian government’s strategy for poverty reduction, recognizes education as a potent tool and formidable instrument to drive home the goal of NEEDS; which is transformation of the entire Nigerian polity.

Thus, NEEDS’ goals of wealth creation, employment generation, poverty reduction and value re-orientation can only be effectively pursued; attained and sustained through an educational system that is efficient and functional (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2008). Therefore, to conceptualize productive advantage of higher education, through their data is to provide information on access to higher education versus products of the institutions; give a critical situational analysis of access to higher education in Nigeria towards achieving increased productivity of higher education in Nigeria.

4. Business Intelligence Technology

The field of analytics is the next evolution in business intelligence - moving beyond the practice of creating reports on past events, and towards the use of sophisticated statistical methods to predict future outcomes. An organization equipped with the capability of scientifically predicting future outcomes, while its rivals are merely looking at reports of past events and doing damage control, will have significant informational and decision-making advantage over its competition. Rogue Wave Software (2013).

. Fig. 2: Business Intelligence Infrastructure, Source: Raghavendra (2012)

Information is one of the valuable assets to any Institution of higher learning. When used properly, it can help planners and decision makers

in making informed decisions leading to positive impact on targeted group of citizens. However, to use information to its fullest potential, the planners and decision makers need instant access to relevant data in a properly summarized form

In spite of taking lots of initiative for computerization, some decision makers in the institution of higher learning in Nigeria usually face difficulties in obtaining meaningful information in a timely manner because they have to request and depend on IT staff for making special reports which often takes long time to generate. An information warehouse can deliver strategic intelligence to the decision makers and provide an insight into the overall situation. This greatly facilitates decision makers in taking micro level decisions in a timely manner without the need to depend on their IT staff. By organizing data into a meaningful data warehouse, the decision makers can be empowered with a flexible tool that enables them to make informed policy decisions for citizen facilitation and accessing their impact over the intended section of the population.

The need to improve the decision making capabilities using the ever increasing computing power, availability of Relational Database Base Management Systems across heterogeneous platforms led to the use of more and more information in the decision makes process. Though the information base in each of the institution has grown into hundreds of thousands of GBs/MBs, the peculiarity of database structure does not allow one to perform a detailed analysis on the data from the way one wants to do.

Fig. 3: Three Phases of Business Intelligence, Source: A.T. Kearney analysis (2011)

Competitive advantage can be derived by higher educational institutions in Nigeria when it develops strategies, techniques, or resources that allow it to outperform its competition. One such resource

is the innovative use of analytics to improve their decisions or operational processes. Decision makers can use analytics to cultivate the data collected from day-to-day operations into key insights unavailable to the competition.

Further, even if one does the analysis on large volume of data one should know the complete designing of the data model and the contents of it. It is practically not possible for anyone to know the complete data modelling and the contents and ad hoc query analysis is simply not possible. This implies that only an expert in data modelling can do any sort of desired analysis. This clearly shows the limitations in the conventional systems. As the top-level officials/decision makers want to do detailed analysis before taking a decision the academia are now looking for a framework by which one can accomplish multiple goals.

Three types of spontaneous questions that arise while dealing

with the data include:



Those that produce a number: How many students are

 Those that fit into a report: What are the students broken out by the proposed applicant’s realignment?

 Those that require analysis: How many additional students will get benefit with the new scheme? Will it make any difference in the life style of the citizens and improve economy? Is there any chance of stopping multiple applications?

 How and from where one can find answer for the above queries.

It is here that the Business Intelligence – a new database technology in IT helps in analyzing and selecting the right answer.

5. Relationship between Higher Education and Business

Intelligence

Business Intelligence is a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing and providing access to data to help the decision makers in making decisions. Typically, BI applications include decision support systems, query and reporting, On Line Analytical Process (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting and

data mining (a technology to extract unknown and hidden patterns and knowledge from within the data). Business Intelligence therefore is well suited for higher institution applications. For effective implementation of a BI solution, the de facto condition is a solid and reliable data warehouse. Data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, non-volatile collection of data, cutting across the enterprise. Until there is a repository of accurate data across the enterprise value chain, application of BI tools to analyze and aid in strategic business decisions is impossible.

Currently, data integrity, found wanting in most enterprises is the most difficult and resource consuming stage of BI development and deployment.

6. Benefits of BI for better productivity in Higher Education

is:

1.

Do not have to deal with heterogeneous and silo systems

3. Can obtain easily decipherable and comprehensive information without the need to use sophisticated tools.

4.

Figure 4: BI and Higher Education

This helps them to formulate more effective strategies and policies for citizen facilitation going by the higher education definition, Business Intelligence technologies, which help policy makers draw key

Decision Making

conclusions from data, become a critical component of any educational system initiative, as is shown in the figure below.

The benefit of the BI system can summarize in this way. From a layman’s angle the BI technologies are more towards facts than other forms. All the plans and decisions can be arrived with the help of detailed multi-dimensional analyses of all the relevant data. In fact it helps the academia and the entire citizens more than the government. The institutions can have a compact and compiled analysis of their previous activities and forecast the future without stress but based on fact.

7. Conclusion

A framework for BI in higher education is presented here. A large number of higher education applications are already in operation in most of the institutions in Nigeria. The necessary BI infrastructure has been created at the ICT centers and sufficient number of higher institution staff have computer skills. This is the right time for introducing BI in the higher educational system in Nigeria and to further strengthen the educational sector. In order to incorporate the BI system and implement this, initially one or two areas may be identified and the BI system built over it as a proof of concept. Once the desired results are achieved the same can be replicated in other sectors of the government. Once the complete system is in place at the national level for use a knowledge bank can be created for the entire Nigerian environment. This paper and the author's experiences to date do in fact indicate that BI can be a powerful decisions making tool. However, implementing BI successfully can be problematic especially in regard to overcoming political roadblocks.

List of References

Idogho, P.O. (2011) Higher Education In Nigeria And The Challenges Ahead. European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011. Itedjere, P.O. (1997) History of Education. Benin City, Nigeria: Osasu

Kearney, A.T. (2011) Better Decision Making with Proper Business Intelligence Quality information is key to making quick, rational business decisions, Illinois USA.

Marius, C. (2009) Business Intelligence and E-Governance, “Valahia” University, Târgovite.

Raghavendra, R.N. and Smeerti, T. (2012) “Business Intelligence; Building an Intelligent management” Bangalore, Karnataka state, India.

Richard, K. (2006) “Intelligent Cities: developing new methods of public service management and delivery”,

www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/festival/programme/urb/kingston.ppt Whawo, D. D. (1997) An Introduction To The Study Of Education (2nd

Edition). Benin City: World Of Books Publication.

Oyaziwo, A., Philipa O., Idogho, Justina S.I (2012) Increasing Access to University Education in Nigeria: Present Challenges And Suggestions For The Future. The African Symposium: An Online Journal of the African Educational Research Network.

Rogue Wave Software (2013): Driving Competitive Advantage by Predicting the Future Extending business systems with embedded predictive analytics; USA. www.roguewave.com.

Watson, H. J. and Wixom, B. H. (2007) The Current State of Business Intelligence. Computer. Pp. 96-99.

http://Liquidlearning.Com.Au/Llg08/May/The-Higher-EducationBusiness-Intelligence-Conference-2014.Html

http://Www.Atkearney.Com/Documents/10192/79cbde83-4fa8-4bfb-B4a3-F57f400d1576

Some scientific fields that are currently receiving more attention both from scientific communities and in the general public are competitive intelligence, smart city (intelligent city), and territorial intelligence. Common to all these fields are the concepts of information, information systems, knowledge, intelligence, decision-support systems, ubiquities, etc. The advantages for industries (production and service industries) and governments (federal, state and local governments) cannot be overemphasized. This resurgence is due to the impact of technologies for dematerialization of objects and human activities.

Since the term “intelligence” is central for the theme of this conference, there is need to specify its meaning that we are using for the conference.

Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria.

From this definition, it is obvious that intelligence in a way or the other rely on the process of observation (comprehending our surroundings) and ensuring that the observation is transformed into knowledge ("catching on," "making sense of things”, or "figuring out what to do”).

Editors

Prof. Amos DAVID & Prof. Charles UWADIA 978-2-9546760-1-2