Caserta

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the AVP for information and analytics at a private university. I provide information to people who need it.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Caserta?

Our technical team’s skillset was not up to par with the industry. They were also busy with other projects, so we needed to outsource some work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I have engaged Caserta in three different venues.

One of the most significant involved a team from Caserta implementing a whole project. They did a fantastic job at staying within our budget. They completed the project within a very short time and demonstrated incredible value. Because of how much they accomplished, we presented their work to our provost. It opened doors for us and helped us continue to receive funding.

It was a traditional data warehousing project involving data modeling and extraction. We did an ETL to pump data from several sources. We dealt with the complexities, definitions, and rules around data governance and security. On top of that, we had to introduce a dashboard to visualize the data.

At that time, visualization was new to Caserta. They used OBIEE. We used Datastage for the ETL component.

What is the team composition?

It was a relatively small team. Someone served as both project manager and architect, which I really liked. We also had an ETL developer and a data visualization person.

How did you come to work with Caserta?

A personal industry contact recommended them to me. There was no question that we wanted to work with them. Other companies gave me consultant selling points, but Caserta's president dived into specifics. The substance was there.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent approximately $2 million on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in June 2010 and it is an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It was the first time that academic leadership could easily visualize and access assessments and measurements. It was highly praised and well-received on campus, by both academic leadership and the provost. We operationalized the data that they gave us.

We plan to work with them on more architecture for self-service business intelligence (BI). We want to learn and experiment more with that.

How did Caserta perform from a project management standpoint?

They have been fantastic. We’ve been happy with their level of communication and availability. Our case was a little different because they weren’t managing the project. I was responsible for figuring things out on our side.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have genuine knowledge and expertise. They are not just trying to sell you something. They are honest, setting the right expectations and delivering on them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could learn how to market themselves better.