z" EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY: INFORMATION FOR STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING ! ! BI!User!Group,!2 nd !June!2016! ! Andrew!Quickfall,!Head!of!Planning! Alan!McFarlane,!Senior!Planning!Officer!
Presentation Structure • Who are we? • Why did we need a BI solution? • Our journey so far • In-depth look at BI models • Demos • Future plans and challenges
Profile of Edinburgh Napier University • Napier Technical College in 1964, amalgamating with Napier College of Science & Technology and Edinburgh College of Commerce in 1974, before being awarded university status in 1992. • Merchiston Campus is built around the site of the 13th- century Napier Tower, home of John Napier, the inventor of logarithms. • Multi-campus University
Profile of Edinburgh Napier University • 20,000 students from 117 countries • Over 1,500 staff • Turnover of £120M • Subject areas include Engineering, Life Sciences, Creative Arts, Nursing and Business • All round University committed to Excellent Teaching, Research and Transfer of knowledge to business.
Strategy 2020
Why do we need Business Intelligence? • Linked to Strategic Objectives around growing student numbers and associated tuition fee income • Improving Student Experience • Student Number reporting • Better quality information • Faster information • Reliable and consistent – standardised analysis • Holistic reporting of Students, Staff, Finance and Research • Information available for a range of different people • Supporting processes e.g. student applications and likely enrolments, Tier 4
Our journey so far … • Implemented from Planning and Business Intelligence Team • Small team responsible for Business Planning and student number reporting • Support from IT and Senior Management was vital • Initially ran Cognos BI implementation project from IT department but with high level of input from Planning Team • Initial development was time consuming with initial work on replicating student reporting • Learning process to understand how to use the technology in the business setting • Started small and built slowly. Planning Team is main users of Cognos.
Support from Barrachd • Supported by Barrachd from day 1 • Aimed to be as self-sufficient as possible • Consultancy to support implementation and initial developments • Worked with Planning team to ensure knowledge transfer • Used primarily for Data Warehouse and initial framework development • Site License for 140 concurrent users • 5 Author licenses
Initial Benefits • Statutory reporting to Government is easier and faster • Consistent approach to student number reporting • Ad hoc reporting is quicker and easy • Outputting simple student number tables for University
Began to get more sophisticated • Population Modelling for Admissions: – Model to take student applications – Calculates likely enrolments based on historical trends – Used to balance the number of offers made to students – Important for SFC population
Expanding the reach to Academic Staff: Module Analysis • Results of students in Modules previously calculated by Academic Staff • More time spent on gathering figures than analysing them • Dashboard to enable greater analysis of results for Module Boards and changes to curriculum
Module Evaluation • Making results from Module Evaluation survey available for reporting • Visually engaging • Potential to integrate with other BI reports such as Module Analysis • Performance of modules and how they are perceived by students
Market Intelligence data • Beginning the first phase of understanding what Academic staff need in terms of developing a course • HESA Sector trends • By Subject, Demographics of students, Domicile, Course titles • Other Strategic information such as WP markers and Mobility • Benchmarking
Programme Analysis • Providing the Results and Outcomes and Awards data for Academic Staff for Programme Student Experience Performance • Performance and Marks at a Student, Programme and Subject level Programme Module • Broken down by different Analysis Analysis dimensions e.g. gender, ethnicity, disability status • Benefits are consistency of information used by Programme Leaders
Finance reporting • Developed Management Accounts pack for Senior Budget holders in Cognos • Explorer Dashboard for ‘at a glance’ reporting and interactive analysis • Drill down to General Ledger detail • Integrates Financial KPIs and performance focus: • Actuals • Budget • Forecast • Transparency of results • Cultural change of Senior Leadership Team in University
Where next? • Student Planning and Forecasting – Student number planning and indicative fee income – Scenario planning – Increased involvement from Schools in target setting process • Learner Analytics: – Electronic footprint of students – Library logins, Virtual Learning Environment, IT footprint – Aim to increase use and quality of VLE – Links to Student Satisfaction • Workforce and Financial reporting • Surveys – destinations of graduates and Postgraduate Research students
Driving Performance through BI across the University • Work to date has focussed on the building blocks of information • Next phase is putting all of these together into dashboards to drive performance • Managers Dashboard focussing on past and current performance on a number of elements • Focussed on performance and culture of using information to inform decision-making holistically • Links to strategic business and strategic planning of academic Schools and driving towards 2020
Academic Managers Dashboard Student Numbers: Research: - Enrolments against target - Applications - Student applications - Income - Fee income - Success rates University and Academic KPIs Student Satisfaction: Workforce and Financial: - NSS - Pay and non-pay - PTES / PRES - Key Workforce Metrics - Module Evaluation
Future plans for Cognos • Increased usage of Cognos internally but still more to do • Rolling out Cognos mobile app • Upgrade to Cognos Analytics over the summer: – Faster report development – Better user experience – Visualisations
Demos • Student data model • National Student Survey data: Understanding the student experience • HESA sector data: External Market and Competitor Intelligence
Challenges Reflection on where we have come from and where we are now: 1. Planning Team was the right place for this work to be driven from BUT needs firm support and collaborative working across University (IT, Senior Management, Business owners) 2. Skills of team • Extremely lucky that Planning Officers had a basic skillset that was suited to learning Cognos • Enthusiasm and desire to improve not simply replicate 3. Prioritisation of work • BI Stakeholder Group
Challenges 4. Communication and engagement: • We have a range of products that are useful for a range of staff, although not widespread yet • Mixed response and engagement in using these for decision-making • Developed a Communication and Engagement plan: – Communications to all staff and selected groups: drip feed approach – Working alongside Senior Leadership Teams – Involvement of Senior Committees – Ipads – starting with Senior Leaders – Training and development for staff minimal • Question : what has worked in your organisation in terms of improving the use of BI information?
Thankyou
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