In a definitive move to modernize its digital campus, Georgia State University (GSU) has finalized a sitewide transition to QuestionPro. This landmark Qualtrics replacement signals a new era in higher education data strategy, where institutions prioritize business intelligence (BI) and fiscal predictability over overpriced legacy contracts.
- Georgia State University (GSU) secures a three-year sitewide partnership with QuestionPro, establishing the first US-based implementation to integrate business intelligence (BI) from day one.
- The transition addresses the rising costs of legacy platforms, utilizing a strategic “piggyback” procurement model to achieve long-term budget stability for the GSU IT department.
- Early deployment and comprehensive SSO integration allowed 30+ faculty and staff members to launch research workflows two months prior to official onboarding, proving high institutional trust.
[Atlanta, Georgia, March, 2026] In the current higher education ICT landscape, many universities find themselves trapped in a cycle of rising renewal costs and “feature bloat.” Georgia State University identified a critical misalignment between the premium price of its previous incumbent, Qualtrics, and the actual ROI delivered to its faculty and administration.
To solve this, GSU leveraged a strategic “piggyback” procurement agreement: a sophisticated model that allowed them to accelerate their move toward a unified insight backbone. Under the strategic leadership of Eric Floyd, associate director at CETLOE, the university prioritized a partner that offered more than just survey collection: they required an integrated research infrastructure that offered cost-effective scalability for their campus.
The Implementation: A Blueprint for Seamless Migration
A major hurdle in institutional tech migration is operational downtime. GSU bypassed this risk through a rare level of pre-onboarding engagement. By September, two months before the official contract began, the GSU team initiated intensive training for 25 to 30 key employees.
Led by Trish Nolde, Associate Director for LMS & Support, this proactive approach established institutional memory and allowed researchers to build complex surveys in a demo environment with zero disruption. Technically, the partnership focused on enterprise-grade security. QuestionPro’s engineering team successfully implemented Single Sign-On (SSO) and domain-based mail delivery, ensuring that GSU faculty could access the platform securely and distribute high-stakes research without deliverability issues.
The Outcome: Leading the BI Revolution in Academia
The GSU partnership represents the first major US sitewide sale to allocate a dedicated budget specifically for business intelligence (BI) and advanced reporting from the start. This allows GSU to move beyond static data exports and into real-time, interactive dashboards—a capability that was previously missing or cost-prohibitive.
By turning raw survey data into live executive intelligence, stakeholders like Lee Webster can now visualize behavioral trends and student feedback in a “Single Pane of Glass.” This high-velocity reporting empowers the University Board and Provost with the evidence required to drive student retention and strategic growth. GSU’s decision to move toward a right-sized insight infrastructure marks a turning point for North American universities seeking to liberate their budgets while elevating their scientific rigor.
About QuestionPro: The Architect of Institutional Insight
QuestionPro functions as a strategic steward of institutional intelligence, prioritizing scientific rigor and ethical governance. Engineered for the academic and nonprofit life cycles, our platform bridges raw data collection and actionable evidence through advanced methodologies like conjoint analysis and sentiment AI. As the “Scientific Backbone” for world-class universities and global foundations, we allow CIOs and deans to consolidate their technology stack without compromising on methodological depth. We empower the world’s visionaries to focus on what matters most: discovery.
