The University of Adelaide up Its Game?

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Business challenge The Australian higher education sector is changing fast, and to compete universities must find new cost-efficiencies and strategies for attracting students. How could The University of Adelaide up its game?

Transformation Adam Gardner By enabling data-driven Manager of Business Intelligence decision-making based on greater The University of Adelaide insight into financials and student enrolment, the university can optimize funding to improve the quality of education it delivers.

Business benefits: “IBM Analytics solutions The University of help us make every cent Offers count towards making the insight into predicted Adelaide university better.” revenue, enabling better Adam Gardner decision-making Delivering high-quality Manager of Business Intelligence The University of Adelaide Boosts education while making competitiveness by revealing ways to improve every cent count student retention

Enhances The University of Adelaide is a world-class tertiary education and research services at a lower cost institution committed to delivering high quality and distinct learning, teaching and with a bottom-up approach research experiences. It has 25,000 students and over 3,500 members of staff to budgeting across three main campuses. Share this Taking a smarter Getting a handle on approach performance

In the Australian higher education sector, To solve the challenge, the the pressure on universities to think organization decided to replace its – and operate – more like businesses is manual approach to reporting with increasing. Universities are realizing that an IBM Analytics solution based on reducing operational spend does not IBM Cognos® Business Intelligence and have to come at the cost of the quality IBM Cognos TM1® software. of education, research and community engagement they deliver – and that The University of Adelaide embarked on improving efficiency can help them to a multi-stage, incremental deployment obtain better value for students, educators of the analytics solutions, supported by and researchers alike. IBM Business Partner Tridant Pty Ltd.

For universities in Australia, retaining Adam Gardner comments: “We students is a priority due to the impact standardized on IBM Cognos that a poor rate can have on attracting Business Intelligence software for new students and the potential self-service and canned reporting, loss of income. integrated with IBM Cognos TM1 for performance management. When student numbers at The University Adam Gardner, Manager of Business In line with Australian law, The University of Adelaide plateaued after a period of Intelligence at The University of Adelaide, of Adelaide negotiates an enterprise “Tridant understood that we wanted to year-on-year increases, the organization explains: “Before, annual budgets agreement with its employees, which ‘own’ the solution once it was deployed, wanted to adjust its strategy. But with were created over a period of six includes terms about salary increases. and transferred the expertise we needed limited insight into student enrolment and months. Because the final budget was Adam Gardner says: “As a people to support the platform in house.” financials, it was difficult to know where to reverse-engineered from a figure that business, salaries are our highest make changes. each budget owner had agreed upfront, cost. Without visibility of how salaries it was difficult to identify and act on would change over time according to potential savings.” our enterprise agreement, we could not map the cost to the organization, preventing us from creating effective long-term forecasts.”

2 Working with Tridant, the university Putting insights introduced fortnightly payroll reporting for the entire organization, meeting into action a key operational need. Next, it migrated 150 users of self-service By shrinking its planning cycles, the reporting from legacy query tools to IBM solution is helping employees the Cognos environment, inspiring the at The University of Adelaide work user community to start accessing more productively. reports again and offering them greater functionality without the need for Adam Gardner comments: “As a result of extra training. the project, we are on our way to reducing the time it takes our departments to By replacing multiple spreadsheets with a create annual budgets from six to three single, centralized solution, the university months, an improvement of 50 percent, has transformed its approach to and monthly forecasting is now also on budgeting and forecasting—dramatically the table. Instead of focusing on pulling cutting the time and effort involved, and numbers together, our budget owners providing unprecedented visibility for have more time to think proactively about its managers. where we can be more efficient.”

“With IBM Cognos solutions, we can By providing access to real-time, dynamic take a flexible, bottom-up approach to reporting, the university is fostering budgeting that enables budget holders “Managers will be able to recognize the The university is now in the early evidence-based decision-making to determine if they are obtaining the most efficient departments and replicate stages of using IBM Cognos Disclosure among its employees. Equipped with expected value for their spend,” says effective measures elsewhere. And using Management solutions to enhance its deeper insight into the student body and Adam Gardner. Cognos TM1, we can model fluctuating annual reporting processes, providing financials, staff can investigate important salary budgets to see our true operational a framework for discussions between areas such as student retention, costs for the first time.” the corporate level and individual and build strategies that will help the faculties around performance and how it university succeed in the competitive can be improved. education market.

3 “We are using our new analytics capabilities to uncover common factors Solution components among students most likely to drop out,” • IBM® Cognos® Business Intelligence

Adam Gardner elaborates. • IBM Cognos Disclosure Management

“For example, students from a particular • IBM Cognos TM1® educational background might need more support. This will help us develop a Take the next step strategy for keeping student admissions Tridant is one of Australia’s largest specialist and retention healthy.” consulting firms focused on implementing performance management and information He concludes: “IBM Analytics solutions management solutions using IBM software, and other market-leading software are helping us to think more like a companies, for both public and private sector business, which enables us to deliver organizations. Tridant’s expertise spans numerous market sectors including financial high-quality services in a cost-efficient, services, mining, retail, education, oil and gas sustainable way. Ultimately, IBM Analytics and government, and it operates nationally from offices in Australia and Singapore. solutions help us make every cent count towards making the university a better To learn more about products, services and solutions from Tridant, please visit place to study and work.” tridant.com.au, or follow us on Twitter at @TridantAus and LinkedIn

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