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

Before implementing Cascade, the College's operational strategies were described as a "black hole". The strategic plan was clearly defined, and meaningful work was underway, but key performance indicators were not consistently established, and progress was difficult to see across teams.

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

This fragmentation created palpable tension among functional unit goals, program goals, and the broader college objectives. Without a centralized system, it was difficult to articulate how specific functional data reports rolled up to the College’s high-level OKRs.

As a result, reporting became a reactive struggle. Senior directors found it difficult to streamline communication with executive leadership, relying on manual reports that lacked context and were often outdated by the time they reached the dean, which limited opportunities for focused, forward-looking strategic discussion. 

Solution

Ryan Retartha, Senior Director of Strategy & Planning, along with his team, turned to Cascade to bring order to the chaos. They weren’t just looking for a tool; they needed a Strategic Command Center where data, context, and execution could come together.

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 static data 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 revealed a stark reality: while individual teams were working hard, their plans were disconnected.

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 updating and managing their success criteria, demonstrating that the "right people" were brought into the platform to drive meaningful updates.

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, leadership meetings at Mendoza College of Business are more than status updates; they are 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, Notre Dame has moved from a "black hole" of work to a bright, aligned future where strategy is everyone's business.