FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

OneAuburn is a comprehensive effort by the university to ensure the university’s data management approach supports the mission and vision of Auburn University. As a key goal of the 2019-2024 Strategic Plan, OneAuburn is the process by which the university can work together to share data and support student and employee success.

Working with campus partners, OneAuburn supports the use of institutional data through planning, execution, and continual oversight of relevant policies, practices, and projects.

At its core, institutional data is necessary to support and maintain Auburn’s central mission of teaching, research, and service. To support effective and innovative management, Auburn’s institutional data must be accessible, accurate, and easily integrated across the University’s information systems to support our organization’s strategic goals.

Auburn’s leadership recognizes and appreciates the value-added benefits of being able to aggregate information across multiple complex systems and business processes. In 2018, the university established a Data Governance group to establish and implement data governance policies, procedures, standards, and guidelines. This group is working to manage, protect, and ensure the integrity and usefulness of university data.

Salesforce.org is a cloud-based tool that allows the university to connect all of its data in one place. With Salesforce, Auburn can more accurately track information about students, faculty, staff, alumni and other groups. Auburn employees benefit from consistent, more reliable data sources that support and make better, more informed decisions that advance the mission and goals of the institution.

Auburn University currently licenses multiple software products that support the institution’s programs and business functions. Over time, these products often become siloed among the unit(s) using them, resulting in data that becomes siloed. This current practice typically leads to uninformed decisions, duplicated work, and the unnecessary spending of resources that result from data that is not accessible from a common source. Apart from increasing costs each year to maintain numerous software platforms (many of which duplicate similar functions), the university can benefit from more strategic information sharing that supports decisions involving resources or other implications.

With Salesforce, Auburn has the opportunity to create a common data source designed to share information and increase the efficiency of the university’s business processes, reduce overall expenses, and improve data quality. Examples of these benefits include features such as better tracking and monitoring of employee information, more concise marketing and recruiting campaigns, more accurate monitoring and tracking of student information and engagement data across the student lifecycle, and improved business practices.

Salesforce supports a suite of applications currently licensed by the Office of Information Technology. Programs such as Banner, DegreeWorks, Advise Assist, and Canvas are crucial to advancing the university’s mission and supporting the services and functions of university departments. Salesforce will consolidate data sources from multiple applications to provide a single source view of a constituent thereby increasing efficiency and enabling more purposeful decision making.