A new company is hoping to ease challenges with data management and automation between campus systems.  Called SwiftData Technology, the company was formed by card industry veterans Bill and Brian Adoff.

SwiftData offers outsourced data management services to higher education and corporate campuses. The company’s Pinwheel Data Management Engine (Pinwheel DME) is designed to automate business workflows between existing campus systems by integrating with all campus systems of record. Pinwheel integrates with Ellucian's Banner and Colleague, PeopleSoft and Jenzabar and passes required data to various third-party systems.

It is designed to integrate with any meal plan, stored-value, door access, or ID badging program using internally developed plug-ins, says Brian Adoff, head of business development. He says the company intends to offer a vendor-neutral data management system for higher ed that is positioned as a cost-effective alternative to in-house data integration.

"We pull the raw data, and based on what the university wants, we develop the logic," he says. "A university could decide to migrate to a different card or door access system, and would only need to install a new plug-in from us without having to rewrite any of the rules used in the old system."

“The problem with vendor-based integrations is they are designed to integrate only with their system," says Bill Adoff, head of engineering with SwiftData. "Schools with multiple door access and meal plan systems from different vendors must rely on those vendor’s individual integration processes.”

“By outsourcing data integration requirements, campuses no longer need to rely on vendor-specific integration tools or one-off customizations," says Brian Adoff.

"The campus takes data from a system of record and then interacts with card and other auxiliary service systems to get things done," he says. "We take data from one system that has to accomplish some task and integrate it with another, physical system."

The integrations are custom-tailored to each university. "We can integrate multiple systems from a single vendor, but the golden use case for us is the university that uses systems from different vendors," he adds.

Learn more about SwiftData at www.automatemycampus.com.