Reports from Workday, the University’s central system for managing people and finances, are now automatically collected and delivered into secure storage spaces such as AWS S3, which is Amazon’s cloud‑based storage service, or Windows shares, which are shared folders on University servers. This process supports projects that draw from more than twenty different data sources, eliminating the need for repetitive downloads and saving analysts hours each week. Freed from the grind of routine tasks, staff found themselves with more time to notice patterns, ask sharper questions, and share what they learned.

Finance teams felt the shift most immediately. Working closely with Finance Systems, the ADG team began building a dedicated domain inside the Enterprise Data Lake, a central reservoir where information is stored and organized. This environment integrates both Workday and non‑Workday data, giving Finance greater control and flexibility in shaping information for analysis. Secure, role‑based access ensures sensitive details remain protected, while familiar tools such as Power BI, a program for creating interactive charts and dashboards, SQL, a language used to query and organize data, and Excel, the spreadsheet program, allow staff to explore the data without learning something new. Instead of chasing fragments, they could open their preferred tools and see the whole picture waiting for them.

The work extended beyond efficiency. When enrollment numbers were needed, the Registrar and Institutional Research offices no longer had to piece together data by hand. By aligning definitions and processes within the Workday Prism Census Snapshot, a reporting tool inside Workday that captures enrollment data at a specific point in time, the team created a consistent view of enrollment, a clear photograph of the student body at a given moment. This snapshot made reporting on Full Time Equivalent students, a standard way of balancing part‑time and full‑time counts, both accurate and reliable. What had once been a fragmented process became a shared lens through which the University could see itself.

Institutional Research gained a new vantage point as well. Recognizing the unique needs of analysts and data scientists, the team began developing a flexible domain that consolidates internal and external sources, including IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System which is a national database of higher education statistics, surveys, and Census Snapshots. Within this space, IR staff can use the tools they prefer, whether SAS, a program for advanced statistical analysis, R, a programming language for data science, Power BI, or SQL. What was once scattered across systems is now gathered together, ready to be explored and shared across campus.

Through each of these efforts, the team kept people at the center. Technology carried the heavy load of gathering, storing, and organizing, but interpretation and meaning remained in human hands. As the University moves into 2026, enablement remains a top priority. The team continues to support human‑in‑the‑loop workflows, an approach where technology does the heavy lifting but subject matter experts guide interpretation and decision making. In this way, Wake Forest’s data ecosystem grows more powerful while remaining grounded in the voices and insights of those who use it.