Business Intelligence Case Studies

Webinar – Business intelligence in higher education: experiences from the sector

To mark the launch of the Business intelligence infoKit, Jisc infoNet held a webinar on 13 May 2013. The webinar included a showcase of the updated infoKit, experiences from the University of Liverpool, details of a new Maturity Model from Oficina de Cooperacion Universitaria (OCU) and news of Jisc’s plans in this area.

Workshop – Jisc Digital Festival 2014

Outcomes from the business intelligence workshop at the Jisc Digital Festival in Birmingham on 11th March 2014.

Images CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Jisc infoNet

Why is BI important?

Supporting management decisions: Good and relevant data will facilitate a better understanding of where savings can be made, allow an assessment of how much can be or has been saved from efficiency initiatives (for example through baselining costs), and support the development of benchmarks.

Organisations require access to accurate, timely and meaningful information about their core businesses and the environment in which they operate, if they are to adapt and thrive during times of great uncertainty.

Business Intelligence (BI) is an essential element of decision-making in the private sector. The education sector needs to catch up. Strategy and planning, and the need to respond quickly to change, have to be based on accurate data about the state of your organisation and the environment in which it operates. Colleges and universities often do not have the accurate, understandable and accessible information that they need to make confident, sound business decisions.

Business Intelligence provides accurate, up to date and easily-accessible data about the organisation and its environment, allowing the college or university to be competitive; it can also adapt more quickly to changing circumstances, plan for the future and optimise limited resources.

Business intelligence systems can also help organisations gather information and present evidence on which to plan for the future, benchmark different aspects of their performance against other organisations, and deploy limited resources to best effect.

Organisations automatically collect data on how their customers (students, academics etc) interact with their standard business systems (finance, library etc). By analysing this data, organisations are increasingly realising that they can uncover hidden patterns to help improve their business or services. Improving your BI capabilities will also help position your organisation to take best advantage of the emerging potential of advances in data analysis (so called ‘analytics’) of this type.