Empowering analytics: How PwC helped pave a new path for INROADS

What was the challenge?

“As part of our mission, INROADS helps prepare high school and college students for corporate jobs and connects them with internship opportunities at more than 270 American companies. We wanted to use analytics to develop a 360-degree view of our students and their outcomes that could help us facilitate grant reporting, fundraising and communications with key stakeholders. Working alongside PwC, we identified six separate data sources across the organization and integrated them into a single, scalable source of truth that could easily be accessed to create reports. Our leaders can now view dashboards that offer useful insights about students, corporate partners, alumni and donors — all in one place.”

Describe the solution delivered by the PwC community of solvers.

“Given INROADS is a nonprofit organization with a small IT staff, it was important to implement an off-the-shelf solution. We were already using Microsoft products, and PwC thought our organization might be an ideal candidate for a Microsoft Fabric implementation. Microsoft Fabric is a single-platform software-as-a-service with highly integrated products, that can eliminate the need for major infrastructure development. We also were fortunate that PwC has a strategic alliance with Microsoft and the team was able to leverage in-house engineers to help refine the implementation. As a result, the data extraction, aggregation and visualization effort yielded results in just six to nine weeks when it typically takes six to nine months.”  

How does the solution blend the strengths of technology and people?

“Staff across our organization have really been excited about this project. It takes INROADS from very tactical and disconnected reporting into something that’s more consolidated and analytical, allowing us to give our leaders, program staff and donors more information faster. It also will allow us to grow as new technology emerges — whether that’s AI or something else. Working with a platform like Microsoft gives us an advantage. It’s not something we have to worry about building; they’ll just release new updates. And for a small organization, that’s huge. PwC understood that.”

Where or how did innovation and unexpected ways of thinking come into play?

“A lot of our reporting is gathered for a specific purpose, but since it wasn’t built into a broader dashboard, it was difficult to fully understand how a particular data set or a report fit into the larger picture for the organization. This new system allows us to offer our people a more cohesive understanding of how they fit into the organization’s broader mission. It’s made for a less siloed approach to work. We’ve built an accessible system that’s capable of offering incremental information. And if you have a simple dashboard available to see where you are, you’re more likely to act on that information.

When you look at the longtail impacts of the INROADS program — 76% of INROADS alumni are homeowners, for instance — it’s mind-blowing. We’re hoping this new system helps us to surface more insights to paint a bolder picture of just how much our students have been able to accomplish.”