JISC

As senior managers are looking for more information about finance and costs, a fresh toolkit from JISC is helping them source hard evidence to support decision making.

The popular strategy infokit has been revamped to include a major new section on ‘business intelligence’ and the role it can play in enabling institutions to make informed evidence-based decisions.

Steve Bailey from JISC Infonet, the service that developed the kit, explained why this approach is becoming increasingly popular among institutions:

“Higher education is going through a great deal of change at the moment; consequently the need for institutions to have access to detailed and accurate information about their activities and the environment in which they operate has increased markedly. 

“There are many routes available to an institution when seeking to improve their business intelligence capability and many potential pitfalls to avoid along the way.  Hopefully through this infoKit we can help institutions to plan and implement their chosen business intelligence strategy as smoothly and productively as possible.”

The infokit also now includes the experiences of four institutions who used aspects of the Strategy infoKit within their institutions - the University of Sheffield, Edinburgh University, Cambridge Regional College and Beaumont College, Lancaster.  

Each of these pilot institutions tried out aspects of the infokit in ‘real world’ contexts and their reflections have been integrated within the main infokit, as well as each being available for download in their entirety. 

Beaumont College is one institution where senior staff have used the advice to inform their strategy planning meetings.

Rohan Slaughter, head of technology at Beaumont College said: "Having the kit as a reference point for everyone kept the task focussed, indeed the excellent structure of the kit was mentioned several times as being very useful. It was also noted by new leadership team members that the kit really helped them as they 'found their strategic feet' and provided a good way to benchmark their activity."

Access the Strategy infokit and related pilot resources

Visit the new business intelligence resource direct