Developing business intelligence

The issue

Institutions 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.

What you can do

Business intelligence (BI) systems can help institutions gather information and present evidence on which to: plan for the future, benchmark different aspects of their performance against other institutions, and deploy limited resources to best effect. But access to these systems is still a struggle for many institutions as they face issues such as a lack of strategic alignment, problems integrating systems, inefficient processes or issues with data quality. 

Our business intelligence guide is based largely on the practical experience of UK institutions and helps to address these areas. It includes case studies showcasing institutional approaches to implementing business intelligence systems and a BI maturity model - a good starting point for any initiative in this area. 

Your business intelligence system will only be as good as the data held in it, and our accompanying guides around records and information management can help you to ensure you have robust practices in place to begin with. 

Activity data is an important source of information for evidence-based decision making and our toolkit can help you understand how to use it in the academic environment. 

To keep up to date with this area of work, you can join our business intelligence email list.

Looking ahead

Our research and development work is exploring some of the challenges around business intelligence further and developing good practice.