As the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business looked to advance its mission, leadership saw an opportunity to better align a talented team around a shared approach to execution, ensuring that strategic priorities translated seamlessly into action.

Problem

Prior to adopting Cascade, the College recognized the need for clearer and more consistent strategic visibility. The strategic plan was clearly defined and meaningful work was underway, but key performance indicators were not consistently established and progress was difficult to gauge across teams.

The College relied on a combination of Google Sheets, documents, and various project management tools including Monday.com and Slack, which made it challenging to maintain a shared view of priorities and progress.

This fragmentation created alignment gaps between functional unit goals, program goals, and the broader College objectives. Without a centralized system, it was difficult to articulate how specific functional data reports supported the business school’s high-level OKRs.

As a result, reporting became reactive. Senior leaders found it difficult to streamline communication, relying on manual reports that often limited opportunities for focused, forward-looking strategic discussion.

Solution

Ryan Retartha, Senior Director of Strategy & Planning, and his team implemented Cascade to unify planning and execution, creating a strategic command center where data, context, and execution align.

To streamline implementation and secure early buy-in, Ryan’s team worked closely with Cascade’s Customer Success team to lead system setup and deliver a fully operational platform from day one. They migrated disjointed plans and data sources into Cascade before handing the keys to the functional units. When users first logged into the platform, they saw their work, visualized and connected, rather than a blank slate.

"Our functional leaders weren’t tasked with any of the setup. By removing that responsibility, they immediately started to see the benefits of the platform instead of the work that went into it." — Alison Lanski, Program Director, Business Intelligence

Cascade served as a unified source of insight. By integrating data from Slate (enrollment reporting) and Google Sheets, the team converted the existing data systems into dynamic performance indicators and established a consistent monthly reporting cadence with the dean and senior leadership.

Results

The impact was immediate and surprisingly deep. By visualizing the strategy, Cascade acted as a mirror, showing the organization exactly where it was misaligned. This visibility sparked a culture shift.

The "Aha" Moment

The unified view of the College’s strategy highlighted a key opportunity: While individual teams were working hard, their plans were operating in silos.

High Engagement

Despite a history of "initiative fatigue" from previous enterprise rollouts, the College saw massive adoption by focusing on the leaders closest to execution.‍

• ‍88% Monthly Active Users: Leaders and managers are consistently logging in, contrary to expectations of reticence.‍
• 72% Engaged Users: The majority of users are not just viewing but actively leaving meaningful updates and managing their success criteria.

Strategic Acceleration

The platform has become an accelerator for broader organizational improvements, specifically regarding business intelligence.

"It’s been an unbelievable change agent in the larger organizational discussions we've been wanting to have about data governance and infrastructure," Retartha notes.

Previously stalled conversations about the student journey and data integration (such as with Slate) are now advancing due to Cascade’s reporting, which surfaces gaps in the College’s data strategy.

Impact

Today, the leadership at Mendoza College of Business can engage in more strategic discussions driven by live data. The dean and senior leadership now have a clear line of sight into the progress of the College's initiatives.

With Cascade, Mendoza has moved from fragmented systems to a bright, aligned future where strategy is everyone's business.