"Partnering with Entrinsik to implement Informer has been a game-changer for Mid Michigan College."
Overview
Mid Michigan College is a public, community college with campuses in Harrison and Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Serving approximately 3,297 students with a 28:1 student-faculty ratio, the college offers over 600 courses each semester, including 100+ online classes.
Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), Mid Michigan provides career-focused associate degrees and certificates in Liberal Arts, Health Professions, and Business Administration. As a member of the Michigan Community College Athletic Association, it also supports a vibrant student life experience.
A dedicated Entrinsik customer since 2011, Mid Michigan has leveraged Informer and Entrinsik's Managed Services team to enhance data governance, compliance reporting, and institutional research. Informer's integration with Ellucian Colleague has modernized regulatory reporting, making annual processes like STARR and IPEDS submissions more transparent, efficient, and interactive.
Challenge
Mid Michigan faced an urgent crisis when their STARR (Student Transcript and Academic Record Repository Collection) reporting process broke down. The internal technical expert responsible for maintaining their custom-built Colleague X-Screens departed, and the X-Screens themselves stopped functioning.
Without a working solution, the college struggled to validate and submit critical state-mandated reporting, risking noncompliance. Staff had no visibility into how the reports were compiled, leaving them unable to verify data accuracy or adjust submissions with confidence.
To make matters worse, they had only six weeks to rebuild their STARR reporting process ahead of submission deadlines.
Mid Michigan needed a solution that could:
- Rapidly replace broken reporting infrastructure
- Integrate seamlessly with Ellucian Colleague
- Deliver transparency, flexibility, and scalability for future compliance needs
Solution
Mid Michigan partnered with Entrinsik to modernize its STARR reporting framework using Informer, shifting away from fragile legacy X-Screens toward a transparent, interactive reporting structure.
Working alongside Mid Michigan's staff, Entrinsik's Managed Services team:
- Aggregated and structured data across multiple Colleague tables
- Built reusable, flexible report templates for STARR and future compliance needs
- Enabled full visibility into how data is compiled and validated
- Empowered end users to self-service and manage reports independently
Results
Entrinsik's collaboration with Mid Michigan College and Ellucian delivered both immediate and long-term benefits, helping institutions standardize compliance reporting and maintain seamless data access as they modernize their environments to cloud.
Mid Michigan College increased efficiency and compliance confidence by:
- Drastically Reducing Development Time: The STARR reports were rebuilt in approximately 40 hours, an estimated 4 to 5 times faster than recreating them as custom X-Screens.
- Empowering End Users: Staff now have full control over their reporting process, reducing reliance on technical experts and increasing long-term sustainability.
- Creating Scalable & Repeatable Reporting: The structured framework built for STARR can now be adapted for other annual federal and state compliance reports, significantly reducing future development effort.
- Improving Data Transparency: Users can see how data is compiled and validated, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and compliance confidence.
"With Informer's intuitive interface, our team now has full transparency into how our data is compiled, empowering us to validate and adjust reports with confidence. We no longer rely on a single technical resource — our team can self-service and dynamically explore the data to meet evolving compliance requirements. This collaboration has not only solved an immediate reporting challenge but has set us up for long-term success in regulatory reporting and data governance."
