Reporting platforms often remain in place for years because replacing them feels risky. But as institutional expectations evolve, many campuses — including those using WebFOCUS — are taking a fresh look at whether their current BI environment still meets the needs of students, faculty, administrators, and leadership.
If your institution relies on WebFOCUS today, here are five common signs institutions tell us they experience when evaluating whether it’s time to explore new reporting approaches.
1. IT is Handling More Reporting Work Than Ever
Institutions using WebFOCUS frequently share that their IT teams spend substantial time supporting report creation, troubleshooting, or adjustments. Over time, this level of involvement can strain resources and slow strategic progress.
2. Users Rely on Workarounds
When WebFOCUS feels challenging to navigate, Users often revert to Excel exports, manual reporting, or departmental workarounds. This creates inefficiency and introduces governance challenges.
3. ROI Is Hard to Demonstrate
Some institutions share concerns about whether usage, support requirements, and training demands align with the overall investment in their WebFOCUS environment.
4. Collaboration Feels Cumbersome
Institutions increasingly want to collaborate directly around data — share Dashboards, discuss trends, annotate changes, and work together in real time. When collaboration isn’t seamless, insights stay siloed.
5. Alignment With Future Strategy is Uncertain
Institutions transitioning to SaaS ecosystems, modern data warehouses, or new governance structures sometimes question whether their current WebFOCUS environment provides the flexibility they’ll need over the next decade.
The Tipping Point
Experiencing one or two of these scenarios is manageable. But when several begin stacking up at once, many institutions using WebFOCUS are choosing to explore BI alternatives that offer more intuitive interfaces, stronger governance, and greater independence for Users.
What Institutions Look for When Evaluating Alternatives
When campuses begin exploring new options, they often prioritize:
Modern, intuitive interfaces
Governed self-service for User independence
Reduced report backlogs
Performance that supports large datasets
Collaboration features built into the platform
Strong mobile access
A predictable cost structure
Integrations with core systems such as Banner or Colleague
Your Next Step
If your institution uses WebFOCUS and is reassessing its long-term reporting strategy, we’re happy to share how other campuses are modernizing their approach.
Higher education institutions depend on their Business Intelligence systems to support critical decisions across enrollment, finance, student success, and operations. But as reporting needs grow and data expectations shift, many campuses, including institutions using WebFOCUS, are taking a closer look at the less visible costs wrapped into their BI strategy.
These costs aren’t always captured in a licensing agreement or annual budget. Instead, they show up in the operational effort required to support reporting, maintain data consistency, deliver insights efficiently, and keep Users confident in the tools they rely on every day.
If your institution uses WebFOCUS today, understanding these hidden costs can help you evaluate whether your current BI environment continues to align with your long-term needs.
Visible Costs (Only Part of the Story)
While licensing, modules, and support contracts are well understood, institutions often share that these only represent a portion of the total investment in a mature reporting environment like WebFOCUS.
Licensing and Scaling
Many campuses note that licensing may grow as they expand reporting access or broaden the scope of their BI usage. This can make long-term budgeting more complex, especially when institutions want to democratize data widely across departments.
Limited Out-of-the-Box Features
Many institutions tell us that WebFOCUS provides a relatively small set of native visualization options. As reporting needs become more sophisticated, campuses often find they need additional configuration work or custom development to create the dashboards or visual layouts their users expect today.
Maintenance and Upgrades
IT teams routinely describe the ongoing work involved in keeping WebFOCUS aligned with other campus systems such as ERPs, CRMs, or student success platforms.
Hidden Costs (Where Institutions Feel the Most Impact)
IT Time and Reporting Support
One of the most consistent themes we hear from institutions using WebFOCUS is the growing volume of reporting support required from IT:
Creating or modifying Reports
Helping Users interpret data
Troubleshooting Report logic
Maintaining queries and Data Views
Managing Banner or ERP joins and integrations
Training on using the system
As reporting demands grow, this workload can make it difficult for IT to focus on long-term projects.
Self-Service Adoption Gaps
Many WebFOCUS institutions tell us that despite training, some users still rely heavily on IT for routine reporting needs. This dependency can slow decision cycles and prevents Users from accessing the information they need independently.
Outdated User Interface
The UI in WebFOCUS often feels dated, which can slow users down and make even basic tasks feel more complicated than they should.
Workarounds and Data Governance Risks
When Users find WebFOCUS challenging to navigate, they often export Data Views or Reports into spreadsheets. While common across BI tools, this leads to:
Different versions of the same data
Siloed analysis
Manual data manipulation
Increased governance risk
These indirect costs can significantly affect institutional efficiency.
The ROI Question for WebFOCUS Institutions
After considering both visible and hidden costs, institutions often ask:
Are we spending too much time supporting report requests?
Do our Users have the independence they need?
Are we meeting expectations for sharing and collaboration?
Does our BI environment align with our long-term data strategy and governance model?
As we move toward cloud or SaaS ecosystems, does our current approach scale with us?
These questions frequently lead institutions to explore modern alternatives that may better support the next decade of reporting needs.
What Institutions Prioritize When Exploring Alternatives
When institutions evaluate modern BI platforms, they often focus on:
Intuitive, user-friendly web interfaces
Governed self-service capabilities
Reduced dependency on IT
Strong handling of large, complex institutional datasets
Built-in collaboration tools
Predictable pricing structures
Integration with Banner, Colleague, and other SIS/ERP environments
Your Next Step
If your institution uses WebFOCUS and is reassessing its BI roadmap, our team can share real examples of how institutions are modernizing their reporting environments in ways that support governance, self-service, and institutional agility.
Most organizations don't wake up one day and realize their data infrastructure is broken. The cracks show up gradually. A report that takes three weeks to build, another vendor added to solve a niche problem, teams working from different versions of the truth. If you're reading this, you probably already suspect something needs to change. Here are ten warning signs that it's time to consolidate your data platform.
The 10 Warning Signs
1. You Have Multiple Tools Doing Similar Jobs
You've got a reporting tool, a separate dashboard tool, something else for ad-hoc queries, and another platform for operational reports. Each one made sense when you bought it, but now your team spends more time figuring out which tool to use than actually analyzing data.
2. Simple Reports Take Days or Weeks
When a department head asks for a straightforward report—enrollments by program, budget variance by department—it shouldn't require a project plan. If your team is constantly backlogged with "simple" requests, your platform is the bottleneck.
3. IT Becomes a Translation Layer
Your business users know what questions they need answered, but they can't get to the data themselves. Every request goes through IT to translate business logic into technical queries. IT becomes a perpetual middleman instead of a strategic partner.
4. Different Departments Report Different Numbers
Finance says enrollment is one number. Admissions says it's another. The Registrar has a third version. Everyone is technically correct based on their data source, but nobody agrees. This isn't a data problem—it's a trust problem caused by fragmented systems.
5. You're Manually Combining Data in Spreadsheets
Your team exports data from System A, exports from System B, then spends hours in Excel using VLOOKUP to merge them. This isn't analysis—it's data janitorial work. And it's error-prone.
6. Vendor Lock-In Prevents Progress
You want to add a new data source or build a new type of report, but your current vendor says it'll require custom development, extra licensing, or "isn't supported in this version." You're paying for a platform but renting limitations.
7. Data Governance Is Impossible
You can't track who has access to what data, how definitions are applied, or where reports are being used. Security and compliance feel like a game of whack-a-mole because you have no centralized control.
8. Onboarding New Users Takes Months
New analysts or department heads need extensive training across multiple systems. By the time they're productive, they're either frustrated or have learned workarounds that create more data silos.
9. You're Paying Multiple Vendors for Incomplete Solutions
Your BI budget is spread across 4-6 different vendors. None of them talk to each other well. You're paying for redundant capabilities and integration headaches but still don't have a complete solution.
10. Nobody Trusts the Data Enough to Make Big Decisions
This is the ultimate warning sign. When leadership needs to make strategic decisions, they ask for audits, manual verification, or "can you double-check this?" The data platform should build confidence, not erode it.
Self-Assessment Checklist
Before you talk to vendors (including your current one), get clear on where you actually stand:
Data Access & Usability
Can non-technical users build their own reports without IT help?
Do reports pull from a single source of truth?
Can users explore data interactively without pre-built reports?
Is your average time-to-report measured in hours, not days?
Integration & Architecture
Can you connect to all your critical data sources without custom coding?
Do your systems share consistent definitions and business rules?
Can you add new data sources without a vendor engagement?
Do you have a clear data lineage for audit purposes?
Team Productivity
Does your BI team spend more time building new insights than maintaining existing reports?
Can departments answer their own questions without waiting in a queue?
Do you have time to focus on predictive analytics, not just historical reporting?
Cost & Value
Do you know your total cost of BI across all tools and vendors?
Are you getting measurable ROI from your BI investments?
Can you scale without proportional cost increases?
Governance & Security
Can you control data access at a granular level?
Do you have audit trails for compliance requirements?
Are business definitions documented and consistently applied?
If you checked fewer than 75% of these boxes, you're likely dealing with a fragmented data environment that's holding your organization back.
Questions to Ask Your Current BI Vendor
Whether you're evaluating a new platform or assessing your current one, these questions cut through the sales pitch:
Architecture & Integration
How many of our data sources can you connect to natively, without custom development?
What happens when we need to add a new data source you don't currently support?
Do we need separate products for reporting, dashboards, and data prep—or is it unified?
Can business users create their own data models, or does everything go through IT?
Usability
How long does it typically take to train a non-technical user to be self-sufficient?
Can users drill down into data and ask follow-up questions without building new reports?
What does your mobile experience look like for on-the-go access?
Total Cost
What's our all-in cost including licensing, maintenance, training, and required infrastructure?
Are there hidden costs for things like additional connectors, user seats, or data volume
How do costs scale as we add users or data sources?
Vendor Relationship
What does your support model look like? Do we get a dedicated contact or a ticket queue?
How often do you release updates, and what's the upgrade process?
Can we see your product roadmap? How much influence do customers have?
What's your typical customer retention rate?
Security & Compliance
How do you handle row-level and column-level security?
What compliance certifications do you maintain (SOC 2, FERPA, HIPAA, etc.)?
Can we keep data on-premises if required, or are we forced into the cloud?
Proof Points
Can you show us a reference customer similar to our institution who's had success?
What's your average time-to-value for implementations?
What's the #1 reason customers leave your platform? Pay attention not just to what they answer, but how they answer. Vague responses, deflection to "that's on the roadmap," or "we can custom-build that" are red flags.
Why Organizations Choose Informer
We're not going to tell you that Informer is the only data platform that works. But if the signs and questions above resonated with you, here's why Informer might be worth a conversation.
Built for Real Users, Not Just Data Teams
Informer was designed around a simple idea: the people who understand the business best should be able to answer their own questions. No SQL required. No waiting for IT. Business users can explore data, build reports, and create dashboards without becoming data engineers.
One Platform, Complete Capability
You're not buying separate products for data prep, reporting, dashboards, and analytics. Informer is a unified platform that handles everything from data integration to visualization. One vendor. One licensing model. One place for your team to master.
Connect to Everything
Whether your data lives in a modern SaaS platform, a legacy system, a database, or a spreadsheet, Informer connects to it. And when you need to add a new source, you're not waiting for the next release cycle or paying for custom development.
Governed by Default
Data security, user permissions, and audit trails aren't add-ons—they're built into the core Informer platform. You define business rules and definitions once, and they're consistently applied everywhere. Different departments can work independently while still operating from the same source of truth.
Built for Your World
Entrinsik, the company behind Informer, has spent years working with complex organizations in higher education, healthcare, insurance, local government, and nonprofits. We understand compliance requirements, budget constraints, and the reality of working with legacy systems that can't just be ripped out.
Access Anywhere You Work
Whether you're at your desk, in a meeting, or traveling between campuses, Informer delivers consistent functionality across all your devices. Our responsive web platform automatically adapts to your screen size, providing full functionality on laptops, tablets, and smartphones. We're also developing enhanced mobile and desktop applications that will bring even more powerful on-the-go capabilities—because we believe mobile access shouldn't mean compromised functionality.
You're Not Just a License Number
When you work with Informer, you get dedicated support, regular training, and access to a community of users facing similar challenges. We improve the platform based on real feedback from customers like you, not just what sounds good in a boardroom.
What Happens Next?
If you recognized your institution in these warning signs, the path forward is straightforward:
Run the self-assessment with your team to document your current state
Calculate your true cost of your current BI environment (include vendor costs, IT hours, opportunity cost)
Ask your current vendor the hard questions—their answers will tell you what you need to know
Talk to alternatives like Informer to understand what's possible
Your data platform should be an accelerator, not an anchor. The right unified platform pays for itself quickly, not just in reduced vendor costs, but in faster decisions, better insights, and teams that spend their time solving problems instead of fighting with tools.
If you want to see how Informer handles your specific use cases, let's talk. No pressure, no sales pitch, just a real conversation about whether we're the right fit for your institution.
Ready to explore what a unified data platform could do for your organization?
As the end of life (EOL) for Ellucian CROA draws near, educational institutions are presented with a critical decision—not just to replace obsolete technology but to significantly upgrade their data management capabilities. Informer by Entrinsik offers a strategic path that enriches user experience and extends data functionality far beyond what was previously possible with Ellucian CROA.
Embrace Advanced Integration and Customization with Informer
Informer's ability to integrate seamlessly with a diverse array of data sources, including SQL databases, ERP systems, and flat files, stands out as a foundational benefit. This flexibility is crucial for higher education institutions aiming to maintain the continuity of their existing data ecosystems without the burden of extensive migrations or system overhauls. Furthermore, Informer's customization options are particularly valuable, enabling users to create tailored Reports, Dashboards, and conduct Ad hoc Queries that align perfectly with institutional needs. This adaptability not only makes Informer a solution that can evolve with your institution but also enhances its scalability and long-term usability.
Upgrade Reporting and User Experience
Transitioning to Informer means embracing a platform designed with all levels of technical proficiency in mind. Its intuitive interface ensures that both technical staff and non-technical end-users can effectively navigate and utilize the system with minimal training. Beyond ease of use, Informer provides sophisticated reporting tools that enable real-time data analysis, automated report scheduling, and interactive Dashboards. These features empower administrators and educators with actionable insights, facilitating informed decision-making and strategic planning. Informer’s capabilities are designed to enhance the way institutions engage with their data, making it a powerful tool for driving efficiency and educational success.
A Trusted Partner for Ellucian Institutions
Informer has established itself as a market leader in the Ellucian community, with nearly 500 educational institutions utilizing the platform to enhance their data management and reporting capabilities. This extensive adoption by Colleague and Banner schools underscores Informer's alignment with the specific needs and challenges faced by these institutions. Entrinsik's commitment to this market goes beyond providing a robust software solution; it includes tailored support specifically designed for Colleague and Banner environments. This focused approach ensures that each institution can fully leverage Informer's features to meet their unique operational requirements. The partnership with these schools is further supported by transparent and predictable pricing, which helps institutions manage their budgets effectively and plan for long-term growth without concerns about hidden costs or escalating fees. This commitment has made Informer a preferred choice among Ellucian schools, delivering not just powerful software but a partnership that schools can rely on for continued success and innovation.
Join Us for a Smooth Migration: Experience the Support of Our Customer Success Team
Embarking on the migration from Ellucian CROA to Informer is made significantly easier with the support of our Customer Success Team. Our team members are not just experts in Informer; they come directly from higher education backgrounds and possess a deep understanding of the unique challenges and needs faced by educational institutions. They have guided countless migrations from CROA to Informer, ensuring that each transition is as smooth and efficient as possible. Their experience is your advantage—they anticipate common hurdles and provide proactive solutions to facilitate a seamless integration process. By partnering with our Customer Success Team, you gain access to a wealth of knowledge and a supportive guide every step of the way, making your migration to Informer not just successful, but also a strategic enhancement to your institution’s data management capabilities.
Wrapping Up
The discontinuation of Ellucian CROA provides a unique opportunity not just to replace but to significantly enhance your institution's data analysis tools. Informer by Entrinsik stands ready not only as a replacement but as a considerable upgrade, offering a richer, more user-friendly, and cost-effective data management solution. Embrace this opportunity to transform how your institution handles data with Informer.
Ready to see how Informer can transform your data management strategy? Book a demo today and let our team show you the capabilities and advantages of Informer firsthand.
We sat down with Simone McGrath, Director of Enrole Sales and Marketing, to discuss the new Ellucian Colleague connector for Enrole users.
Covered in this article:
Enrole’s new Colleague Connector replicates courses and sessions created in Enrole directly into Colleague in real-time
Student data is synced in real-time between Enrole and Colleague, establishing the single sign on access to important resources such as LMS, library, labs, and parking
State-mandated reporting for non-credit offerings is facilitated by the Colleague Connector, invaluable for allocation of grants to institutions
Enrole is a SaaS product for predominantly non-credit registration, e-commerce, course management, and reporting that integrates with learning management systems such as Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, Zoom and Desire 2 Learn. The Enrole team has extensive experience in the continuing and higher education arena. Entrinsik has specialized in registration software since 1984, and reporting on Ellucian’s Colleague since 2006.
Enrole now offers a native Colleague Connector that is especially exciting and convenient for non-credit continuing education departments. We identified a significant need for the ability to drive enrollment information from Enrole into Colleague. With the Colleague connector, courses and sessions are created immediately, and students upon purchase of a Session are matched or created and registered in the section in Colleague.
A Typical Workflow
Enrole syncs students in real-time with Colleague, creating a new profile if a student match is not found and pulls back into Enrole their Colleague ID at the time of creation. This connection establishes student access to their email.edu address, identification cards, labs, dining rooms, and learning management systems. This becomes a huge time and resource-saver by utilizing existing Colleague integrations and their respective access through Colleague instead of reinventing the connection from Enrole. However, Enrole does offer direct integrations with Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle; with Zoom and Desire2Learn also coming soon.
Another important use case involves reporting. State-mandated reporting is required to come from a single source such as Colleague. Clients need to push Enrole registration data such as gender, race, nationality, and other demographics depending on the course type into Colleague to satisfy this requirement, which the connector facilitates. This information is often used for state-funding and grant allocations, which is why this connector function is so valuable.
The non-credit course offerings out of Colleague are not always intuitive for the staff to create or the student to register and therefore do not function as intended. Enrole is intentionally integrated with Colleague to maximize functionality for a wider variety of institutional offerings.
