Monitoring progress

Data sources

KPIs & the senior management dashboard

The importance of KPIs in enabling you to keep a constant check on progress against agreed strategic objectives has already been covered in an earlier section of the infoKit, so too advice on how to ensure that your KPIs can be easily and regularly monitored. Though practice varies from institution to institution, most seem to appreciate the value of regularly reporting on their KPIs.

Some institutions, however, are beginning to move beyond the production of regular, pre-scheduled progress reports and towards a 'self-service' model whereby senior managers are provided with direct access to the raw data, plus the tools with which to 'slice and dice' the data as they require to answer specific questions, or to check on progress as and when they want to.

The University of Northumbria's Northumbria World is one such example and includes dashboards, scorecards, KPIs and advanced drill down capabilities to provide holistic, up to date reliable information in an easily accessible framework.

Such an approach enables managers to view the institution's performance in real time and to obtain answers to the specific questions that they need to address, when they need to address them.

Figure - How regularly do you update and/or renew your strategic plans?

Other sources of performance measurement

Of course, KPIs represent only one means of assessing your institution's performance available to management and members of the governing body. The CUC Report on the implementation of Key Performance Indicators: case study experience (June 2008) also lists the following sources of performance data:

• National Student Survey
• The Times Good University guide
• The Sunday Times League Table
• HEFCE Performance indicators
• Student recruitment and retention
• Employment data
• Health and Safety data
• Research grants and contracts

Though its HE focus denotes its origins many of these are also applicable to FE institutions or have similar equivalents.

Nor should we overlook other, well established, sources of progress information including reports from committees, reports from the Vice-Chancellor and reports from internal and external audit.

Of course what is also required is a shared agreement of exactly what it is that is to be monitored and what the targets are that you are striving to meet. Without shared agreement on these the risk of 'comparing apples with pears' may well undermine your efforts to provide an accurate indication of performance.