Success story · Higher education · United States

The challenge

The same private US university where we cut platform cost by 85%. With the data foundation in place, the next question was how to put that data in people's hands.

• Leadership lacked data to back strategic decisions.
• Analyses took too long, even for rough estimates.
• Non-technical staff and students had no self-service - every question went through someone else.

What we did

We delivered an AI virtual assistant for the university's teams, built on Faro Lighthouse - the same data foundation that runs its reporting.

The first proof of concept on raw copies of the source systems did not work: there was far too much data and the assistant could not tell which tables to use. It went live only on a modelled layer with clear names and agreed business definitions. We wrote about it in Is your data AI-ready? Wrong question.

Access is role-based, so people only see the answers they are allowed to see.

The result

• A 3-day search across teams became a 15-minute conversation, with drill-down answers.
• 94% of answers correct.
• Governed, contextual access - every answer respects the user's role.

What it changed for the business

Operational answers are available when they are needed, not days later. Analysts explore data faster, data engineers get support in troubleshooting - and leadership can back decisions with numbers.

More results

• 85% lower platform cost for a private US university
• Live in 3 months - a cloud analytics foundation for a regulated financial company
• 40+ systems, one data foundation - a Danish investment company

We don't name our clients without their consent. All figures come from the client implementations described.