Higher Education
Technology, Analytics & Omnichannel Enablement
How DePaul University partnered with The Northridge Group to connect fragmented data sources, model the financial impact of student success initiatives, and enable leadership to make clearer, data-driven decisions.
80+ pages of disconnected reports simplified into a financial model linking student retention to revenue impact
The Challenge
DePaul University, the largest Catholic university in the United States, serves more than 21,000 students across 10 schools and colleges. Each college operates with its own systems, reporting structures, and budgets.
While the university had access to significant amounts of data, leadership struggled to translate that information into clear insights that could guide strategic decisions.
Key issues included:
Disconnected data sources across financial and academic systems
Large volumes of reporting that were difficult to synthesize for leadership
Limited visibility into how student success initiatives affected financial outcomes
Executive leadership needing a clear narrative to support board-level decisions
An initial data pull produced more than 80 pages of charts and reports, highlighting the complexity of the information but not delivering actionable insights.
The Strategy
The Northridge Group partnered with DePaul to take an agile, data-first approach focused on identifying the most relevant information and translating it into strategic insights.
The strategy focused on:
Clarifying the specific decisions leadership needed to make
Identifying the data sources most relevant to those decisions
Aligning financial, enrollment, and retention datasets across departments
Enhancing quality, workforce management, and supporting tools
Translating technical analytics into insights that resonated with executive leadership
Rather than simply producing more reports, the goal was to create a clear analytical model that linked student success initiatives to financial performance.
The Execution
The Northridge team worked closely with DePaul stakeholders to analyze existing reporting, connect previously isolated datasets, and develop a simplified modeling framework.
Key actions included:
Evaluating existing data sources across financial and academic teams
Removing indirect costs that obscured true initiative performance
Connecting enrollment, retention, and revenue data to create a unified view
Developing modeling capabilities to simulate the financial impact of key variables
Translating findings into simplified reporting designed for executive and board audiences
Through this process, the team moved from fragmented reporting to a clear analytical framework.
The Impact
The engagement enabled DePaul University to transform complex data into strategic insight.
The university gained the ability to:
Understand the financial impact of student retention improvements
Model how specific initiatives affected both individual colleges and university-wide financial performance
Simplify reporting and eliminate unnecessary complexity
Provide leadership with clear insights for board-level discussions
Align academic and financial data to support long-term planning
By moving from 80 pages of disconnected reports to a clear analytical model, DePaul leadership gained a powerful tool for connecting student success strategies to measurable financial outcomes.
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Transform Complex Data into Clear, Actionable Insights for Leadership Decisions
The Northridge Group helps organizations translate complex operational and data challenges into clear strategies and measurable outcomes. By aligning analytics, operations, and leadership priorities, we help teams move from data overload to confident, data-driven decision-making.
