Organization Overview
Over the course of the semester, our group has analyzed the business model of Chatham’s Eden Hall Campus. We decided to address Eden Hall because of how new the programs at the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment are (Eden Hall, 2017). Since 2010 the sustainability programs at Eden Hall have been developing along with their use of database to log important information about prospective students, current students, faculty, and different courses. Along with Chatham implementing the Falk School of Sustainability not very long along, it is very unique because it is one of the only fully sustainable campuses in the U.S. In total, Chatham University is comprised of 2,002 undergrad and graduate students and 324 part-time and full-time faculty (Quick Facts, 2016). While not all of those students take classes at Eden Hall or are enrolled in the sustainability program at Eden Hall because the University has in total 67 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, it is important to assess how Eden Hall specifically administers their business process model. In order for the Falk School to continue its leadership and education in overcoming sustainability challenges, they must use their database system to make their business process model the most efficient and effective as possible.
Business Process Overview
After interviewing the Dean of the Falk School, we learned important details about their business process model. For example, we explored how Chatham’s Eden Hall Campus manages student data and the processes involved in tracking student information throughout their careers at Chatham through their graduation from the program.
Database Needs Overview
The business process of Eden Hall program and campus we studied in this project focuses programs, and students and faculties in the programs. The key data, however, is students’ information. Though the process involves many actions that are taken in different parts of the process, all of these revolve around students. The process started out the attract more students. The school utilizes marketing strategies to reach out to potential students. After admission, database is created to keep track of students’ process, alert faculty on students’ performance, and maintain students’ interest in the school by continuing improving the school’s programs.
At the moment, the method of data capturing, processing, storing, and managing for the business process is fairly simply. Students’ information is first received through fill-out form (physical or electronic forms). This data is later entered to a simple database. The database that stores the information of prospective or interested students is much simpler than the database that stores current students’ information. This is because the former database does not include a whole lot of information from students, just the basic. In addition, the information in this database, though arguable much larger than the latter database for the school tries to reach out to as many students as possible, this information is not permanent. After the school determines either the student is qualified or not, or the student is no longer interested in the school or program, then that student’s information would either be moved to the current students database or permanently removed from the school database. The processing, storing, and managing of the current students’ information is still at a simpler level than the business of big business such as pharmacy or retails.
Based on our interview with Eden Hall Dean, and research on the school, we created a model relational database that can effectively store, process, and manage the current students database at the moment. The model is simple and straightforward. It can also be easily accessed. However, considered in the long run, when the numbers of students, faculties, and programs increase, this model will not meet the requirements to store all of the important information. Even at the moment, there have been some data demands that are not met by this model.
First of all, arguably, the transport of students’ information from prospective students database to current students database may require manual work. Second, The end-user applications that created to help non-IS expert accessing the database are rather limited. These forms sometimes encounter malfunction that need experts to resolve, and it takes time to resolve these problem. Time is money that cannot be compensate. Last but not least, as the size of the database and the demand for access of the database increase, the number of IS experts working on the database is rather limited. This is already an issue, and will be a much bigger problem if there is little to no change to the current method of capturing, processing, storing, and managing the database.
Opportunities for Improvement
Based on the above assessment of the business process, there are many ways the business process can be improved. First, instead of creating a database for each step of the process, all information should be stored in one big database that is able to process, store, and manage all of the information the school aims to keep track. This database should be fast, cost-effective, and easy to access by faculties, students, and school staffs. Second, though relational database is a useful and simple model to use to store relatively small amount of information, in the long run, this model is not ideal. The relationships among data and values will get complicated overtime. As a result, an improved database should, somehow, limit or eliminate the issue with messy relationships among data and still maintain the uniqueness and clarity of each student’s information. Last but not least, the employment of more advanced end-user application is feasible and more desirable. To attain this option, the school will need to buy customized software from outside vendors or pay people to create those specific applications. Either way, the applications will need to be updated for an easier access for end-users.
Potential Disruptive Innovations
Although Chatham is a relatively small institution, and Eden Hall makes up an even smaller portion of it, there is a large amount of potential in bridging the current relational database system to a hybrid SQL and NoSQL database management system. While this seems like a daunting shift at first, there are many benefits to such an implementation. SQL is a relational database, while NoSQL is non-relational, so the hope is to maintain the relationships of data tables provided by SQL, but having the freedom, speed, and elasticity of NoSQL. This means that a hybrid would allow the organization to keep referential integrity between tables, but as more and more data is added to the system, hardware is added horizontally to the server instead increasing the processing power, which is costly and time consuming, to the existing machine. This hybrid, a multiple database system, would allow data tasks that use small amounts of information and small tables to be tracked in the style of a normal relational database model, but by using JOINs, usually not found in NoSQL, allow us to relate information in different data tables (Microsoft Technet, 2011). These joins are key in being able to transform the data in NoSQL to a triple formatted entity to be read in SQL (Roijackers, 2012).
Along with the implementation of a hybrid database system, the next step is to apply Hadoop, a software which allows many layers of processing to occur simultaneously in parallel (The Apache Software Foundation, 2014). Hadoop could be a very effective agent in processing potential student data. Because Hadoop works in a NoSQL style database, it uses multiple servers to processes and analyze data in parallel, meaning large data sets that would usually take numerous hours on a standard relational database, will take significantly less time with Hadoop (Lo, 2016). Hadoop is a rather complex system to work with and understand, however with proper training and experience it can be of the utmost value in data analysis. Coding a command into Hadoop can even make it possible to send an alert to administration and advisors if a student’s grades are falling rapidly or are approaching a worrisome level (Wilson, 2016). With proper training, and updates to procedures, these disruptions to software, hardware, and data, the Eden Hall process could yield magnificent capabilities in information systems management.
Business Process Model
As noted prior, to develop a model for Eden Hall’s Admission process, we interviewed the Dean of the Falk School of Sustainability, Dr. Peter Walker. The model illustrates the methods used for recruiting, admitting, and tracking of a student's progress throughout the program. It is important for the administration of Eden Hall to understand their process model and relationship with the information systems involved in order to evaluate their program strategy's effectiveness and efficiency (Kroenke, 2015). Although in more detail, the process model can help assess the key roles and activities of the organization.
There are six different swimlanes that constitute Eden Hall’s process model. Each swimlane includes an actor, which is either a person, department, or information system that has a role in carrying out different activities during the business process. These actors are: Falk School of Sustainability Department, Chatham’s Human Resource Department, the Marketing Department, Administration, the Office of the Registrar, and the student. The process begins with Chatham’s Sustainability Department developing a sustainability program at Eden Hall, which is an activity. Then a control flow leads to establishing a program budget. There are also multiple data flows that connect the program development activity with two other swimlanes, human resources and the marketing department. When HR receives a developed program, it then begins the activity of recruiting appropriate faculty to fill the program classes. While HR is in the process of hiring faculty, there are negotiation data flows between hiring faculty and calculating the budget under the sustainability department.
From here, data migrates to the marketing department from the sustainability department and they design a marketing campaign to attract future college students. After the marketing campaign is in place, there is a control flow sending inquiries to those potential students. The potential student information is stored in a Mailing List, a data repository. The repository is solely a housing area for data from which activities can stem from, but is not an activity itself.
Once the inquiries are sent to prospective students through a data flow, said student respond to inquiries by a control flow which leads to two other activities. The process then flows into a new swimlane, this one labelled Administration. Through a data flow, administration will review the application, which ultimately causes a decision to be made. In a business process flow model, a decision is a certain type of activity box, represented by a diamond, that gives two options and flows to two different outcomes (Kroenke, 2015). The administration can then accept the student entry or deny them. If denied, the student is sent a rejection letter and the process ends, but if they are accepted, the student is sent information on making a deposit to attend. Going back to the student swimlane, the student will then visit campus, and from there they then have to make a decision being whether or not to attend. If the student does not attend and the process is over, or the student decides to attend and pays the deposit.
The newly enrolled student then begins a new activity of selecting classes. Once the student chooses classes, the process moves to the Registrar swimlane, where the registrar stores this information in another data repository labelled, “Student Database”. This repository keeps track of students’ progress and allows for the continuance of other activities related to the final step of the process model. Once information flows through the Registrar, it is up to the student to accomplish the final activity of graduating, which then effectively ends the model.
References
Eden Hall Campus. (2017). Chatham University. Retrieved from:
Kroenke, D. (2015). MIS Essentials, 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: Pearson.
Microsoft Technet. (2011). Join Fundamentals. Retrieved from:
Roijackers, J. (2012). Bridging SQL and NoSQL (Master’s thesis). Eindhoven University of
Technology.
The Apache Software Foundation. (2014). What is Apache Hadoop? Retrieved from:
Lo, F. (2016). What is Hadoop and NoSQL? Retrieved from:
Quick Facts. (2016). Chatham University. Retrieved from:
Wilson, L. (2016, March 4). 3 ways universities are leveraging big data analytics for
recruitment. Retrieved from
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