Prioritize Data Use Cases for Higher Education

Data initiatives are proposed on a different timeline than the institution's planning cycle, making it hard to sequence investment.
Competing operational areas – student success, research administration, finance, and others – each push their own use cases forward.
No shared framework exists to evaluate and compare use cases against institutional strategy.
Data readiness is often overestimated, leading to use cases being greenlit before the underlying data can actually support them.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

A data use case has no inherent value – its value is only ever relative to how well it advances institutional strategy.
No institution can afford to let its data portfolio be shaped by whichever stakeholder speaks loudest or pitches hardest.

Impact and Result

A defensible, strategy-aligned shortlist of prioritized data use cases the CDO can bring to leadership.
A ranked output and quadrant chart that visualizes value versus feasibility for every use case assessed.
Output feeds directly into steps 4.1 and 4.2 of Info-Tech's Data Strategy blueprint.

Prioritize Data Use Cases for Higher Education Research & Tools

1. Prioritize Data Use Cases for Higher Education Deck – Gives higher education CDOs a repeatable way to rank competing data use cases against institutional strategy.

This storyboard walks higher education data leaders through a three-step framework for prioritizing data use cases: select the use cases under consideration, establish the institution's value drivers, and assess and rank each use case against those drivers. It closes with a defensible, ranked shortlist and quadrant chart the CDO can take directly to leadership, feeding into Info-Tech's Data Strategy blueprint.

2. Higher Education Data Use Case Prioritization Tool – Gives CDOs a structured, repeatable model to score and rank data use cases across weighted institutional value drivers.

This companion tool includes four tabs: a Value Drivers tab for weighting the institution's strategic priorities, a Use Case Assessment tab for scoring each candidate use case, a Priority Ranking tab that outputs a ranked list and quadrant chart, and a Scoring Reference tab that documents how each score is defined. Together they turn the prioritization framework into a repeatable, defensible exercise the CDO can run again as new use cases emerge.

Align investment to institutional goals.

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Author

Mark Maby