How to use this section

Background

This 'Environment Scanning' section consists of content resulting from the culmination of a separate 12 month JISC-funded project to:

"Investigate, identify and evaluate what can be derived from the information base of institutions that can be used to improve the decision-making process of senior managers"

and

"discover which institutions are currently considering or adopting business intelligence and data visualisation systems and their experiences to date."

During the course of this project we conducted two surveys, both of which attracted responses from over 100 institutions. We also spoke to or visited a number of institutions active in the Business Intelligence (BI) arena, representatives from the BI system vendor community, and the main agencies providing external sources of data to the sector. This enabled us to obtain as complete and balanced an overview of the topic as possible.

Given the clear and desirable links between BI and improved strategic decision-making we decided to make the outputs of this project available within the context of this Strategy infoKit, thereby reinforcing the value of access to accurate and reliable information to assist decision-making. This also highlights the importance of ensuring that any investment in improved business information actually leads to a direct influence on strategic and operational processes within the institution.

Purpose

This section of the Strategy infoKit provides an introduction to the area of BI to those working in the UK Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE) sectors. It attempts to uncover the questions that senior institutional managers may have that may be answered through improved BI - and to provide an overview of some of the stages involved in achieving this. It also explores in some detail some of the many sources of external data which are available to institutions in addition to that created within their own walls. The infoKit goes on to explore some of the benefits and challenges which seem to be emerging so far from institutions already engaged in this agenda.

The aim of this section is to provide a useful introduction to those new to the area whilst providing evidence and fresh perspectives to those already active in pursuing improvements to BI within their institution. Whilst the majority of this section is devoted to BI it also includes other tools and techniques which are of value when attempting to obtain an ongoing, accurate assessment of the 'health' of the institution and the nature of the external pressures it must bear. It also features guidance on how to interpret and make use of the information your institution obtains to maximise its benefit to the strategic planning process.

Section overview and roadmap

The section starts with a definition of what is meant by the term 'Business Intelligence' along with a discussion of some of the problems and limitations that over-reliance on a single definition can cause. We instead propose that adopting a 'checklist of attributes' (both required and desirable) might be a more useful means of usefully defining what does and doesn't constitute BI.

After a brief look at the benefits which 'environment scanning' provides to strategic planning processes we examine the results of a survey indicating the current information needs of senior managers within the sector as well as the main subject areas of interest. Such data should help inform the scope of any proposed BI initiatives within the sector.

The focus then moves to an analysis of the external sources of data available to institutions, their providers as well as the uses to which they can be put within the BI context to help address the information needs of senior managers.

During the course of our research it became apparent that institutions within the sector take a wide variety of approaches to improving BI and that this can make it difficult both to gauge their progress and for institutions setting out on this journey to decide which approach to adopt. Included in this section are several resources specifically designed to counter this complexity and to provide means of both assessing what the various routes to achieving BI might look like and what the experience of the vendor community has to offer. This is all set against the backdrop of a 6-stage 'Maturity Model' designed to help institutions benchmark the current 'maturity' of their BI capability and to see what may be required to progress it further.

The resource goes on to examine the areas that a business case for investment in BI needs to cover before continuing to explore some of the challenges faced by both individual institutions and the sector at large when attempting to progress this agenda.

Analysis of a survey conducted by the project team into the current state of BI in the sector brings together the various intertwined threads addressed within this section. These include different:

• implementation models
• levels of maturity
• vendor offerings
• benefits and challenges

We then cast an eye to the future and what it might hold for this agenda within the sector.

Finally, the section considers 'what happens next'? How should institutions make use of the intelligence they hope to derive from BI to help determine strategic planning? This includes the importance of taking a risk-based approach to analysis and decision-making, the importance of information management for ensuring the quality of information being relied upon, and the need for the institution's senior management to be prepared to honestly analyse their own effectiveness. These are considered within the context of an ongoing review of the institution's strengths and weaknesses.