SMU’s Integrated Information Technology Services (IITS) has been named CIO 100 honouree 2014 for its SMU Corporate Analytics & Reporting (SMUCAR) initiative.

This is the second time that SMUCAR has won recognition. In July 2013, it also garnered the Finalist award in the IT Excellence Award 2013 by International Data Corporation for Best Deployment of Emerging Technology.

CIO Asia magazine’s annual CIO 100 index is a prestigious annual listing of the top 100 enterprises and organisations in Asia that have deployed information and communications technology to derive the highest strategic value and to yield the greatest return for their key operations and businesses.

SMUCAR is the first university-wide business intelligence initiative which provides a single view of information through the use of technology to consolidate disparate information sources.

Mr Lau Kai Cheong, SMU’s Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Integrated Information Technology Services, said “We are pleased to be conferred the CIO 100 honouree award, which is testimony of the talent, dedication and hard work of the IITS team.

“The needs of the university are constantly evolving. As SMU continues to break new frontiers and scale new heights in its pursuit of excellence, IITS will continue our efforts to build an outstanding technology environment through strategic campus-wide technology initiatives and cultivate innovations across the University community. We want to ensure that the SMU Community are equipped with the tools and resources to make SMU the premier research and teaching university in the region and globally.”

With SMUCAR, the various entities in SMU are better able to align their plans to SMU’s vision, strategic goals and KPIs. They can carry out their plans and make adjustments along the way with the help of actionable information across core business areas. SMU staff and faculty across different schools and departments are able to collaborate through analytical services that provide flexible data reporting and visually rich, interactive dashboards which users can build and modify in a self-sustained manner. The vast amount of information residing in the university’s enterprise applications and databases are also rendered visible and accessible.

Users are provided with flexible access to a single source of data at just a click of a button anywhere, any time. The system also facilitates information retrieval for analysis and reporting, leading to timely, evidence-based and informed decision making. This significantly improves the productivity of users and IITS staff. Data quality, security and governance are also improved.

The SMUCAR project was voted as the topic that generated the most interest at the IHL Forum 2013 attended by the 12 Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) in Singapore. Its implementation was also the most comprehensive in terms of the breadth of deployment covering a broad spectrum of domain and diverse groups of users across departments/schools in the IHL sector. 

The dashboards delivered by SMUCAR include Student Lifecycle Management, IT Service Management, Faculty and Staff Lifecycle Management, Student Course Feedback, and Faculty Management.

For example, the Undergrad Admissions Analytics under the Student Lifecycle Management dashboard helps users track and analyse the large number of prospective student applications for a cohort by country, nationality, gender, grades, past co-curricular activities achievements, programme applied, offer status, et cetera across the entire admissions lifecycle. The dashboard also allows users to perform trend/correlation analysis of applicants for past years and understand the demand for each programme SMU is offering. 

[Photo: (from left) The IITS team behind the SMUCAR initiative which garnered the CIO 100 honouree award and IT Excellence Award 2013 by IDC are Mr Lau Kai Cheong, CIO & Vice President; Ms Vennila Vetrivillalan, Senior Manager; Mr Amar Vilas Shedage, Manager; and Mr Tan Gak Khiam, Deputy Director]