Most educational institutions have complex heterogeneous IT systems, which have been running in production for a long time. Department heads have to access several interfaces for their day-to-day activities and face challenges in accessing information on their fingertips.  

Slow response to finding information can lead to delays in key departmental activities like schedule creation and information sharing takes time with emails. Data collection for contact information, schedule preferences from faculty, office hours and final exam schedule can become  laborious task.

Centralizing the database and using a collaborative approach for data collection can have many benefits:

• A single source of truth (data in one place) -  so no redundancy whatsoever. That is, no piece of data should ever be repeated within the data
  base and when part of database is needed we just refer to what is already there. 
• Data integrity issues come up when an organization is operating multiple databases for the same group of people. A centralized database means that each member has one primary record and associated information. Thus when there is an update required, there is only one place to do so. 
• One database also ensures that an organization can build and maintain its data over the system's lifetime. This is possible if the database can be searched easily. Also, it is much easier to generate reports that show the broad range of activities and their relationship within an organization. And of’course data integrity is assured. 
• The learning curve is greatly reduced with a single database. It is way easier for the user to learn and handle just one type of system. This helps improve productivity, increases work efficiency and helps prevent error.

Administrative tasks are greatly simplified and as changes are made by administrators these changes can be backed up. Everytime a change is made in the database changes are tracked. These are viewable using audit logs.  A centralized database can provide better support for students. You can focus on sharing information with students from same database. This again improves productivity and efficiency.