Gray Decision Intelligence Unlocks Big Data for Customers with Astrato’s Enhanced Visuals and Scheduled Reports

Gray Decision Intelligence provides the only complete academic Program Evaluation System (PES) for higher education.

By combining software, data, and facilitated processes, Gray DI ’s PES enables institutions to make data-informed decisions that strengthen relationships among faculty and administrators. PES includes current, local data on student demand, plus jobs, skills, and competition for more than 1,500 academic programs. 

Gray DI PES enables collaborative, data-informed program evaluation and ongoing program portfolio management, which allows institutions to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. By strengthening program evaluation and management, PES increases enrollment, strengthens financial results, and improves DEI.

Zachary Paz, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, Product, explained, “Gray DI cares deeply about higher education because it plays a vital role in society. Over a decade ago, we realized that there is a real need in the market for insights that would help these institutions determine what programs to offer. We believe in making sure that institutions are running viably as well as providing what's needed in the market.”

Paz added,  “Gray DI leverages curated public and proprietary data to assist in optimizing program offerings, fostering viability, and aligning with market demands.  There is a real community benefit in helping millions of students get the right education they need.”

The main Gray DI product suite (PES) provides people with all levels of technical background in higher education with dashboards that bring all the data together with indicators and tools to interpret the information.

For example, when looking at launching a new program, which can require an abundance of resources,  the institutions can see how many students are interested, how many competitors there are, and whether there are employment opportunities for the graduates. Institutions can make a market-based, data-informed decision around launching new programs that will both generate revenue and successfully prepare students.

Legacy solution challenges and need for change

Previously, Gray DI was using an in-memory BI tool, however, as their business grew and their customers' expectations changed, they needed to modernize their tech stack and move to the cloud.

To summarize the challenges:

Scalability and Efficiency:

• In-memory calculations were fast initially but struggled with the growing scale of Gray DI's datasets.

Visualization and PDF Reporting:

• The legacy visualizations were limited in modern design and flexibility. Though they enhanced them through third-party extensions, the output still felt dated.
• Reporting capabilities, such as generating printable PDFs directly from dashboards, were lacking and required manual interventions.

Adoption and Usability:

• Gray DI’s end-users, typically non-technical faculty members, needed intuitive interfaces to access and interpret data. Their previous tool’s interface required significant internal support, limiting self-service capabilities for stakeholders.

Alignment with Data Infrastructure:

• The company transitioned its data systems to Snowflake to manage their growing datasets, which required a BI tool capable of natively integrating and querying Snowflake’s data efficiently.

“As the only complete academic program evaluation system available, we have massive data sets that are growing and want to be able to query performantly.  In addition, our customers required a more user-friendly solution to suit their non-technical users. This meant we needed a new BI solution that fully leverages our choice of Snowflake.” said Paz.

The Solution with Astrato

‍Gray DI explored a range of modern BI tools built to maximize the benefits of Snowflake and the cloud, including innovative platforms like Sigma, ThoughtSpot, and Astrato. ‍And eventually selected Astrato for its balance of functionality and usability, which addressed key requirements points:

User-Friendly Interface:

• Most importantly Astrato enabled data democratization, guiding their non-technical customers to access the insights they need to easily answer ad-hoc questions without needing to code.

Enhanced Visualizations:

• Astrato’s polished and modern dashboard designs met Gray DI’s need for aesthetically pleasing, professional-grade visuals, enhancing client engagement.

Streamlined Scheduled PDF Reporting:

• The ability to generate cyclical reports directly from dashboards empowered end-users, saving significant time and resources for both clients and internal teams.

‍Scalable Integration with Snowflake:

• Astrato’s direct connection to Snowflake allowed Gray DI to handle their extensive datasets efficiently, eliminating the bottlenecks experienced with their previous tool.

Benefits with Astrato

Gray DI’s implementation of Astrato has already delivered some key benefits:

Improved Customer Experience, Acquisition and Retention:

• The improved performance, intuitive interface, and enhanced visualizations improved stakeholder experience and engagement, making data more accessible and actionable for faculty and decision-makers.  This has made it easier to win and retain customers

Increased Productivity:

• End-users are quickly guided to the correct information. They can independently generate reports and custom insights without relying on internal support teams, significantly improving productivity for Gray DI and their customers.

Paz explained, “Our customers are already thrilled by the improvement in user experience we have seen from switching to Astrato, which is enabling their non-technical users to self-serve for the insights they need to make informed decisions and be far more productive.  This is helping us win and retain more customers.”

Future Plans

Gray DI is collaborating with Astrato to explore advanced features, including custom integrations with their proprietary Large Language Models (LLMs) for enhanced Natural Language Querying (NLQ).

This would allow users to ask complex questions and receive immediate, data-informed insights, further strengthening their platform's value proposition.

“Astrato is proving to be a very responsive partner, and we are very excited by the new GenAI capabilities, which we fully intend to leverage to make it even easier for our customers to get the insights they need.” said Paz. 

Conclusion

By transitioning to Astrato and Snowflake, Gray Decision Intelligence resolved longstanding performance and user experience challenges with legacy analytics and reporting workflows.

Astrato’s modern, user-centric platform enhanced operational efficiency and empowered their higher education institution customers to make informed, data-driven decisions. As a result, Gray DI is growing and retaining more customers by using Astrato for customer-facing analytics.