Case Study: Kent State University achieves streamlined admissions processing and integration of 60+ systems with Talend

Streamlining processes for recruiting and admitting students

Kent State University, a large public research university with nearly 41,000 students across eight campuses, faced a “spaghetti mess” of point-to-point integrations that complicated recruiting and admissions for graduate and international students. With an on‑premises Banner ERP and cloud SaaS systems like Salesforce, the university needed a centralized, cloud-capable platform to eliminate data inconsistencies, reduce manual work, and support a planned cloud transition.

Kent State implemented Talend Cloud (Data Integration, Data Stewardship, ESB) with AWS and VO2 support as a unified integration hub, using reusable, drag‑and‑drop components. Talend connected CollegeNET to Banner, synced systems nightly, and pushed cleaned data to Salesforce, enabling integration of more than 60 systems, streamlined processing of over 6,000 graduate applications, shortened development time, and eliminated time‑consuming manual data fixes.

Kent State University

John Rathje

Chief Information Officer