Case Study

Business, Computer Science and Applied Technologies needed to have a technology to manage logistics for its 7 departments to provide exceptional service to its students. It required integrating information delivered by faculty for class schedule, office hours, and syllabus. De Anza was collecting this information using emails, Google Docs and shared directories.

In each term, dozens of courses are taught in each department, by over 100+ full and part-time faculty. This meant gathering information from each faculty regarding their teaching preferences, syllabus, contact information and final exam schedule for each term. This in turn required courses, sections, location and term information in one place. Setting up of this by department chairs and staff can take several hours or even days. Not to mention, there are chances of data inaccuracy, when trying to gather information from multiple sources.

“To be honest, we have not unlocked the whole potential of the product yet. But so far, it is impressive. Not to mention, less paper in the filing cabinets.”

Moaty Fayek – Dean of Business, Computer Science and Applied Technologies De Anza College

BCAT needed to provide timely delivery of information at start of the quarter for every student. "We want our students to have a rich learning experience and have accurate information about classes they are taking. And we want to make it easy for our faculty to get that to us" says Dean Fayek.

Delivering accurate information is something traditional tools cannot do. With information flowing in daily from faculty and staff, the Division sought to further improve on performance of Staff, by trying to find a solution to automate data collection. In short, the Division of Business, Computer Science and Applied Technologies at De Anza College wanted:

• New technology to boost speed of information collection from faculty.
• A way to significantly improve productivity and delivery of information from faculty to students.
• Enhanced scalability for its staff.
• Data accuracy from one source system.
• Reliable and predictable dashboard for management to have a bird's eye view of the Department.

The Department Logistics team set up the division with a proof of concept environment within a week. “It sounded too good to be true,” confesses Dean Fayek, Dean of Business, Computer and Applied Technologies.

Initial usage showed our database was setup with courses, terms, faculty and other information. We had easy ways to upload data and this avoided manual data entry. After streamlining its processes for online information collection, the Division felt comfortable that Department Logistics would deliver the enhancement in productivity as well as accuracy.

“We feel we are future- proofed because we know Department Logistics has a great road map of new features on their cloud- client platform that will help us even more in the next few years”

says Dean Fayek.

Department Logistics also easily absorbed our need to change the database and made the start of the quarter rush, so that they could handle dispensing information at the start of the term.

Department Logistics’s Customer Success team mobilized to ensure that the Division had a flawless experience with easy transition to Department Logistics. This included additional testing and monitoring of system. For the Division, switch to new system was painless and needed no extra effort.

The Division was able to take advantage of Department Logistics rapid database creation and process management technology. “Rapid Database Creation and Process Management technology is super important for us. Every day we go live with a fresh set of requirements for database and processes to handle large amounts of data. And if it takes a long time for us to do this setup, then it would slow us down.  So the ability to get really snappy performance and not compromise on quality or data accuracy is really impressive.”, says Dean Fayek.

“Rapid Database Creation and Process Management technology is super important for us”

says Dean Fayek.

With Department Logistics, the Division has achieved consistency in data collection and delivery from faculty to students. The staff and department heads have the necessary tools to manage the process flow, without worrying about data accuracy. Department Logistics gave the Division both a faster tool and a boost in productivity at the start of the term.