Higher education institutions are under increasing pressure to improve student outcomes while navigating complex data environments.
Many assume they must complete their Workday implementation before addressing data modernization, analytics, or student retention initiatives.
Xavier University is proving otherwise.
By modernizing its data environment in parallel with its Workday rollout, Xavier accelerated its student success strategy and established a scalable foundation for long-term impact.
The Challenge: Limited Visibility Slowed Proactive Student Support
Like many institutions, Xavier University was committed to improving retention and graduation outcomes but faced challenges due to fragmented data systems.
Before this initiative:
- Student data lived across multiple systems and reports
- Advisors lacked visibility into academic, financial, and engagement indicators
- Faculty and staff had to piece together a student’s full experience
- Leadership lacked a unified, real-time view of persistence trends
- Evaluating outreach effectiveness required manual analysis
As a result, student success teams relied heavily on manual reporting processes, limiting their ability to act quickly and proactively.
A Strategic Start: Aligning Around Data-Driven Student Success
Xavier partnered with Avaap’s Data, Analytics, and AI team to define a shared vision for data-driven student success.
Over two months, the team established a strong foundation through:
- A current-state assessment of data and reporting processes
- More than 40 stakeholder interviews across eight departments
- Documentation of institutional goals and priorities
- Alignment on a long-term analytics strategy
This work ensured the solution would address immediate needs while supporting future innovation.
The Approach: Modernizing Data in Parallel with Workday
Rather than taking a sequential approach, Xavier advanced data modernization alongside its Workday implementation.
This allowed the university to:
- Deliver insights earlier in the transformation process
- Avoid delays associated with waiting for a fully mature ERP
- Establish a strong data foundation while systems were evolving
As Xavier CIO Sheri Thomas shared:
“By modernizing our data in parallel with our Workday implementation, Xavier was able to accelerate our student success strategy. Using Snowflake to unify Workday data with other critical sources enabled our first student persistence analytics capabilities, delivering immediate value and empowering leaders to support students proactively.”
The Solution: A Unified Platform for Student Retention Analytics
Working together, Avaap helped Xavier implement a modern data environment designed to support proactive student success.
Centralized Data Platform
- A Student 360 data model brings together data from across the institution
- Expanding Workday integrations strengthen the connection between systems and analytics
Automated Data Processing
- Alteryx automates data preparation
- Manual reporting processes are significantly reduced
Interactive Analytics and Dashboards
- Tableau dashboards provide intuitive, interactive visualization
- Insights are accessible to both advisors and leadership
Supporting Advisors with Timely, Actionable Insight
The platform enables student success teams to evaluate patterns across key indicators:
- Academic performance
- Financial indicators
- Student engagement signals
- Enrollment and progression patterns
With frequently updated data, advisors can:
- Identify students who may need additional support
- Search and filter students by ID, major, cohort, or indicators
- Understand enrollment patterns and term-to-term progress
This reduces time spent gathering information and increases time spent supporting students.
Enabling Strategic Decision-Making for Leadership
In addition to supporting advisors, the platform provides leadership with a strategic view of student success.
Leaders can:
- Monitor persistence and enrollment trends across cohorts
- Identify patterns across academic, financial, and engagement indicators
- Evaluate the effectiveness of student success initiatives
- Inform institutional planning and investment decisions
The Results: Earlier Intervention and Stronger Outcomes
Xavier now has a modern analytics platform that enables more proactive and informed decision-making.
Key outcomes include:
- Earlier student support through improved visibility into student needs
- More effective advisor time with less effort spent on manual reporting
- Institution-wide visibility into persistence trends
- Reduced manual reporting through automation
- A foundation for future innovation across admissions, student success, and planning
What’s Next: Expanding the Impact of Analytics
The Undergraduate Student Persistence Analytics platform represents the first step in a broader vision for data-enabled decision-making.
Future opportunities include:
- Evaluating the effectiveness of student support initiatives
- Expanding insights for admissions and enrollment teams
- Supporting academic departments with program-level analytics
- Continuing to integrate new data sources through Workday and Snowflake
Together, these efforts are helping Xavier create a more connected, proactive student success ecosystem.
What Higher Ed Leaders Can Learn
Xavier’s experience reinforces a key takeaway:
Data modernization and Workday transformation do not need to happen sequentially. With the right approach, they can progress together to deliver faster, more meaningful results.
Institutions can begin building retention analytics capabilities even without fully mature data environments when they focus on collaboration, practical progress, and scalable architecture.
Join the Webinar: See the Approach in Action
Want to learn how to apply this approach at your institution?
In the upcoming webinar, Scaling Student Success: Advancing Snowflake and Workday in Parallel, you’ll hear directly from:
- Sheri Thomas, AVP and Chief Information Officer, Xavier University
- Kimberly Moore, VP of Student Affairs and Chief Success Officer, Xavier University
- Annaleah Morrow, Ph.D., VP of Customer Success, Avaap
You’ll walk away with:
- Practical steps to advance student retention analytics during an active Workday transformation
- Guidance on structuring a collaborative data initiative
- Approaches for navigating data quality challenges
- Insights into how cloud platforms like Snowflake support scalable data foundations
Save your spot to explore how Xavier is advancing student success with modern data.