XBRL, CRM and Data-mining...Oh my!

Purpose:

My task this week is to post a discussion on resources obtained during my research for using XBRL within my department, which happens to be higher education. There is quite a bit of research available on the impact XBRL has on the financial community as conducted by those in higher education as well as information on incorporating training for XBRL taxonomy and requirements in university courses but nothing for use in higher education financial reporting. However, during my research I came across a conference proceeding from the 2012 14th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology introducing the idea of using XBRL for data-mining in higher education. (Ida, 2012). Which lead me down a path for looking at using XBRL for data-mining instead of just focusing on the use of an XBRL taxonomy for financial reporting in higher education.

Question:

Would it be possible to utilize the current systems for Client Relationship Management (CRM) and Student Information Systems (SIS) along with currently supported XML technology and a customized XBRL taxonomy to support data-mining in social media and data analysis for strategic enrollment management? 

Information:

I am currently working on a Master Event list that utilizes both my organization’s CRM system Student Information Systems supported by People soft and want to find a way to tie in the financial system to support the financial documents that accompany the event plan. I mention to the director of operations during one of our budget discussions my need for a master event list to track all the events through our office and be able to tie it to the financial documents for each of the events. She suggest using PeopleSoft CRM to support this and plan a meeting later to discuss in detail. During this follow up meeting we discuss how PeopleSoft will be utilized and how we can incorporate our scheduling software Connect that houses our rosters for the events into the same list making it a more robust feature for the entire office to use. Hold this thought it will play into the thought process I have later.

  

Currently my organization uses Kuali Financial Systems for higher education to manage all of the financial processes and information. In searching the KFS website and documentation obtained online, it appears that KFS supports XML, but there is no mention of support for XBRL at this time. There is support for importing XML information into the system to upload financial charges and export in XML format for reporting purposes, however no XBRL support documentation. So, I look at the PeopleSoft website and forum boards to see if there is a way to support the use of XML to tie the two together. I notice that there is support for XBRL in PeopleSoft for their financial modules, but found nothing on their CRM modules. At the same time looking for XBRL in higher education and PeopleSoft, I stumbled across yet another resource (in addition to the conference presentation by Ida for using XBRL in data mining in Japan) Educational Data Mining. This article focuses on using educational data mining (EDM) for analyzing how students learn with technology by “developing, researching, and applying computerized methods to detect patterns in large collections of educational data” (Scheuer, 2011). I looked into this a little farther and opened a giant can of worms of thought for myself. I found additional resources about EDM, one being the Educational Handbook for Data Mining which is a course (from what I could ascertain from the sample) is about relationship modeling and data mining form students interaction with web-based learning software, but most likely so much more. (Romero, Venura, Pechenizkiy, & Baker, 2011). With this, I research further into EDM and XBRL and find XBRL for Interactive Data: Engineering the Information Value Chain by Roger Debreceny which discusses the use of XBRL in business reporting and has a workflow diagram on the front cover that looks remarkably familiar to the diagram Anne drew for me to explain all of the software that connects the information that we will pull for the master events list.  I start thinking about the information discussed during the master event list planning using PeopleSoft and Connect, rosters and this newly discovered information on EDM to come to the conclusion that this project may grow much larger than me one day.

Conclusion: 

I will continue to build my master events list in PeopleSoft knowing it will most likely move to Talisma one day in the very near future and have a dash board the runs on the Business Intelligence interface (Talisma Campus Management Corp., 2012). I will include this pattern of thought in looking for a short term solution to combining financial data from one software that currently supports XML and our CRM that supports XML (Oracle.com, 2013).

Resources:

Campus Management Corp. (2012). Advanced Workspace Handout 2013. Retrieved from Talisma CRM Advanced Workspace Design: https://uisapp2.iu.edu/confluence-prd/download/attachments/210469145/Advanced+Workspace+Handout+2013.pdf

Debreceny, R., Felden, C., Ochocki, B., Piechocki, M., & Piechocki, M. (2009). XBRL for Interactive Data: Engineering the Information Value Chain. London: Springer.

Ida, M. (Feb. 2012). XBRL Financial Database for Higher Education Institutions. 2012 14th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), (pp. pp.318,322, 19-22 ). PyeongChang: IEEE.org.

Indiana University Office of Admissions. (2011). Visit IU. Retrieved from Office of Admissions, Indiana University: http://admit.indiana.edu/visit/index.shtml

Lyons, D. (2009, November). Kuali Financial System: for higher educaiton, by higher education. KFS Basics - KFS Overview. Kuali Foundation.

Oracle. (2013). Oracle Technetwork Tutorials. Retrieved from Oracle.com: http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/bi/xmlp_ps/index.html

Oracle. (2013). PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.0 Feature Pack 3. Retrieved from Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/campus-solutions/campus-solutions-9-feature-pack-3-166151.html

Oracle Press Release. (2009, December 01). Oracle Announces General Availability of PepoleSoft Enterprise CRM for Higher Education 9.1. Retrieved from Oracle: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/041768

Romero, C., Venura, S., Pechenizkiy, M., & Baker, R. S. (2011). Handbook for Educational Data Mining. Boca Raton: CRC Press Taylor and Francis Group.

Scheuer, O. &. (2011). Educational Data Mining. Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning.

Talisma Campus Management Corp. (2012). Talisma Business Intelligence. Retrieved from Talisma.com: http://www.talisma.com/hi-in/products_services/talisma_crm/Pages/businessintelligence.aspx

Talisma Campus Management Corp. (2012). Talisma Events Management. Retrieved from Tlisma.com: http://www.talisma.com/en-us/products_services/talisma_crm/Pages/eventsmanagement.aspx

(2010). The Kuali Financial System: Community-Developed Software for Education. Kuali Foundation.

Wu, J., & Vasarhelyi, M. (n.d.). 5 XBRL: A New Tool For Electronic Financial Reporting. In R. U. Department of Accounting and Information Systems. New Jersey: Department of Accounting and Information Systems, Rugers University.