z" EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY: INFORMATION FOR STRATEGIC - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY: INFORMATION FOR STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING!

! BI!User!Group,!2nd!June!2016! !

Andrew!Quickfall,!Head!of!Planning! Alan!McFarlane,!Senior!Planning!Officer!

z"

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

Student Experience Module Analysis Programme Analysis

• Providing the Results and

Outcomes and Awards data for Academic Staff for Programme Performance

• Performance and Marks at a

Student, Programme and Subject level

• Broken down by different

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:

• Enrolments against target
• Student applications
• Fee income

Research:

• Applications
• Income
• Success rates

Student Satisfaction:

• NSS
• PTES / PRES
• Module Evaluation

Workforce and Financial:

• Pay and non-pay
• Key Workforce Metrics

University and Academic KPIs

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