Entigence
Reengineering the Paradigm for Managing Faculty Data

Universities eagerly adopt technologies for managing student, finance, and human resource processes, but it’s not the same with managing their intellectual asset— the work that faculty do. Their research, teaching, and service contributions have been relegated to management by email, paper, Office documents, or cobbled-together solutions. The end result consists of overflowing filing cabinets, massive binders, and duplication of information and effort, leading to inconsistencies in the way faculty performance is measured.

As you extend evaluation and aggregation to a large number of faculty having information embedded in documents does not offer the faculty the credit they deserve and the process collapses under its own weight.

However, Rumy Sen, the Founder and CEO of Entigence, saw an opportunity in this challenging problem. Established in 2002, the Entigence team breaks down seemingly difficult problems into manageable, consumable, and analyzable tasks to help universities traverse the complexities of collecting and managing data. Headquartered in Washington DC, the company helps senior university administration leverage institutional data to make confident and timely decisions. “Our name, short for ‘enterprise intelligence’, is derived from this focus,” says Sen.

Entigence’s Lyterati product, a unique cloud-based ERP software for managing faculty information, makes universities rethink how faculty data is harnessed for enhancing institutional reputation. As a comprehensive faculty information system, the software lets Department Chairs, Deans, and Provosts define a standard ontology to drive annual reporting, promotion and tenure, and related faculty processes. “Since faculty’s first priority is research, teaching and service, it is important not to burden them with onerous work of entering and updating their data in Lyterati,” says Sen. Lyterati automatically loads faculty CVs—not just as scanned documents but as searchable entries that represent each row in the CV— giving faculty and academic administrators immediate visibility into the breadth of faculty achievements.

Unlike other sectors where performance is measured through well-defined internal processes, universities tend to let external agencies such as U.S. News and Financial Times define institutional performance. An effective faculty information system can shift the paradigm from external evaluation to an internal focus. “Higher education CIOs are in a unique position to be trailblazers by establishing the clarity of vision for this shift,” says Sen.
Universities embracing ERP initiatives understand the importance of BI. “With built-in BI services in Lyterati and our broader BI solutions for higher education, we help you know where you are, where you need to be, and how to fill the gaps with the right solutions, people, and approach,” says the CEO. From strategy to execution, the company’s best practices and track record with BI for Workday, Oracle, and PeopleSoft enable universities achieve success with technology initiatives that depend on the use of data for high-quality decision-making. “We understand the guts of the ERPs and know how to extract the data, integrate it with unstructured data when needed, and deliver value to business users,” remarks Sen.

Lyterati is making universities rethink the paradigm formanaging faculty data and processes

The company’s data management solutions have been adopted by well-known education institutions such as George Washington University, University of Maryland, Georgetown University, and Northwestern University. “Going forward, we want to expand Lyterati adoption to make a significant impact on how universities think of harnessing faculty data and how they leverage that data,” concludes Sen.