We have been participating in an international project, funded and managed by the Spanish Oficina de Cooperación Universitaria (OCU) and including higher education representatives from countries around the world.
Part of the work of this project has involved the creation of a new BI maturity model, based largely on the experiences of a number of organisations from Europe and the United States who have been active in BI for some time.
As the following diagrams makes clear, the OCU maturity model considers the question of an organisation’s BI ‘maturity’ from 9 different dimensions, each considered via 5 different levels of maturity.
The OCU BI maturity model represents a major new asset for universities who wish to gain a fresh insight into where they currently sit with regards to differing aspects of their BI capability with a view to planning their ongoing development.
Overall maturity levels – names and general descriptions
| Level | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Absent | No formal institutional intelligence initiative is in place, or it is in such an early state that it cannot be perceived as such. Data usage is, in general, limited to operational contexts. |
| 2 | Initial | The notion of data as a valuable asset that must be provided to certain addressees in an efficient, trustworthy way is perceived in some functional areas, and some local initiatives arise. Small scale, local success stories regarding data analysis services may happen. |
| 3 | Expanding | The potential of data to empower the institution at all levels is clearly perceived. There is a strong desire to build on the small, local institutional intelligence success stories and translate that success to a bigger, global scale. The first global, coordinated efforts are put in place and gradually incorporate/substitute the previous local initiatives. |
| 4 | Consolidated | Institutional Intelligence is clearly established as a permanent, global, visible, and valued program resulting in an effective internal service. Several data products targeted to different user groups and covering different functional areas have been created and are actively used. |
| 5 | Institutionalised | Institutional intelligence forms an integral part of the institutional culture, and is taken for granted. Its effective use by all relevant user groups through an extensive set of data products covering all key functional areas is very high. |
By using the OCU maturity model, organisations can:
- Identify their current maturity level
- Set a desired maturity level
- Identify the dimensions of potential improvement, and use them to develop a roadmap or plan to evolve its institutional intelligence initiative to the desired level
- Share a common language to describe its situation on the road to institutional intelligence excellence, hence allowing comparisons and benchmarking among organisations.