ABSTRACT
To place the UA story in the larger context affecting many IR offices today, this chapter is informed by conversations with numerous IR colleagues from across the country over several months in 2016. Having common applications and data across the enterprise is critical because it helps yield a consistent version of the truth, an essential goal for everyone concerned with analytics. Even for the more advanced analysts, the questions the authors seek to answer with predictive analytics, forecasting, and optimization usually require data that span financial, student, personnel, research, and other systems. In July 2014, UA's Office of Institutional Research and Planning Support and the enterprise and information analytics group merged to form University Analytics and Institutional Research. Merging organizations, dealing with historical tensions and differences, and developing new joint approaches to the work has been formidable work in change management, focused largely on overcoming issues of culture and distrust.
