Why a Centralized Faculty Activity Reporting System is a Necessity

Written by John Simon, Ph.D., Senior Advisor for Academic Analytics & President Emeritus, Lehigh University

June 22, 2025

Today, data-driven decisions are more important than ever. Governing boards, university faculty, staff, and students all expect decisions about the future of the academic enterprise to be informed by up-to-date and accurate data. Academic Analytics’ faculty activity reporting platform empowers institutions to move beyond reactive reporting and embrace proactive insight. By transforming data chaos into clarity, we enable higher ed leaders to focus on what matters most: advancing research, supporting faculty development, and shaping a stronger future for their institutions.

Many institutions still rely on outdated, manual processes to manage faculty activity reporting. Whether through spreadsheets or decentralized documentation, these approaches introduce a range of inefficiencies and compromise both daily operations and long-term strategy. It is no longer an option to rely on decentralized and/or manual processes to accumulate data on the research and scholarly activity of faculty. Furthermore, many strategic decisions university leaders need to make require comparing data with peer or aspiration peer institutions. Our faculty activity reporting platform is compatible with tools to produce such comparative analyses.

A manual process might appear cost-effective at first glance, but in reality it hinders institutional capacity in meaningful ways. Below we enumerate some of these limitations and hidden costs. All are addressed by implanting an effective centralized, purpose-built faculty activity reporting system.

1. Data Management and Accuracy Issues

Error-Prone Processes: Manual data entry is inherently susceptible to mistakes. Typos, inconsistent formatting, broken formulas, and version control issues often result in inaccurate and unreliable data.

Data Silos and Fragmentation: Faculty activity data can become scattered across spreadsheets, departments, or even personal devices. Without a unified system, compiling a university-wide view of scholarly productivity becomes nearly impossible.

Lack of Standardization: Different departments may use different templates, track different metrics, and attach different labels to describe similar activities. This complicates data aggregation and comparison.
Cumbersome Verification and Auditing: Verifying the accuracy or source of manually reported data for internal reviews or accreditation can consume an extraordinary amount of time.

2. Operational Inefficiencies and Increased Workload

Redundant Work for Faculty: In decentralized manual data capture approaches, faculty often re-enter the same information in response to identical queries from several administrative offices at the university. In addition, it is usually the case that information submitted for annual evaluation is not stored and then cumulatively assembled for promotion and tenure packets, accreditation reports, and website updates. The duplicative efforts needed across these activities takes time and resources away from the mission driven activities of teaching and research.

Heavy Administrative Load: Staff must manually collect, clean, and compile data from disparate systems, often under tight deadlines. This recurring effort is inefficient and error prone.

Sluggish Reporting Capabilities: Whether responding to legislative inquiries, grant applications, or media requests, pulling together faculty data quickly and accurately becomes a massive challenge.

3. Faculty Experience and Institutional Impact

Faculty Dissatisfaction: Clunky, repetitive reporting processes erode morale and lead to frustration—especially when they distract from meaningful work.

Complications in Evaluation and Promotion: Inconsistent or incomplete data can compromise performance reviews and promotion processes, raising concerns around fairness and transparency.
Missed Opportunities: Without a clear view of faculty expertise, institutions risk overlooking collaborative research, grant partnerships, and external engagement opportunities.
Compliance Challenges: Meeting accreditation requirements often demands detailed, accurate reporting on teaching, research, and service. Manual processes raise the risk of missing the mark.

4. Strategic Limitations for Institutional Leadership

Limited Analytical Insight: Spreadsheets fall short of delivering the analytical depth and data visualization capabilities that a dedicated FAR system can offer.
Hindered Strategic Planning: Without access to reliable, real-time data, leaders struggle to make informed decisions around resource allocation, hiring, and program development.
Underutilized Faculty Achievements: Manual systems make it difficult to showcase faculty accomplishments to prospective students, donors, funding agencies, and accreditors in a compelling, data-rich way.

In conclusion, Institutions that invest in and use dedicated faculty activity reporting unlock strategic agility. Exploiting the transparency, consistent, verified and comprehensive data, afforded by Academic Analytics’ faculty activity reporting platform, universities can better support faculty, drive innovation, invest resources strategically, and demonstrate value to internal and external stakeholders.