Information Strategies for Higher Education and the Jisc / HESA Business Intelligence Service

Myles Danson and Teresa Tocewicz, Jisc

July2014Business Intelligence – an opportunity afforded by good Information Management

Jisc BI Journey to Date

Engage HESA,

HESPA, UCISA,

ARC, AHUA, UHR,

Guild HE, UUK

National research

fed InfoKit V1

Project Phase to road test

V1

Analytics included as series

of reports

InfoKit updated

Jisc/HESA BI

ServicePlans

2010 2010 2011/12 2012/13 2013 2014

Adding value through BI: the view from Jisc

http://blog.observatory.jisc.ac.uk/analytics/

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/business-intelligence/

What does Business Intelligence mean to you?

1. BI is an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance.

2. BI is the use of computing technologies for the identification, discovery and analysis of business data - like sales revenue, products, costs and incomes.

3. BI simplifies information discovery and analysis, making it possible for decision-makers at all levels of an organization to more easily access, understand, analyze, collaborate, and act on information, anytime and anywhere

4. BI is evidence-based decision-making and the processes that gather, present, and use that evidence base

5. Computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing 'hard' business data, such as sales revenue by products or departments or associated costs and incomes

Adding value through BI: the view from Jisc 3

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Examples of attributes of a BI system

Accessible when needed Concise, pictorial or graphical Up to date, current Known update times and intervals Can select data for [any, or defined] time period Good, reliable quality and integrity of data items [All, major] internal information sources are included Drill-down and roll-up capabilities (zoom in or zoom out;

allowing broader or narrower views, as the user requires) Easy to understand

And many more….


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(Some of!) the challenges

Strategic alignment Process realignment Change management Data usage Data definition and management Data visualisation Vendor issues

And many more….


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More institutional perspectives of the pros and cons


What are others doing with BI?

› http://bit.ly/liverpool_bi


http://bit.ly/liverpool_bi

The BI infoKit

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http://bit.ly/jisc_bi


http://bit.ly/jisc_bi

Implementation issues


BI maturity model


BI maturity tool


Jisc / HESA BI Service Objectives

»Promoting sector maturity and capability for BI

»Bring the benefits of BI to wider staff groups

Through;

› Building on HESA expertise and experience of heidi

› New technical service provision with satellite services

› Providing an ‘experimentation area’

› Exploring non-HESA data sets

› Investigating data upload for benchmarking

12Adding value through BI: the view from Jisc

What is heidi?

• Higher Education Information Database for Institutions

• Web-based management information tool run by HESA

• Create reports and charts from a broad range of data about HE, and undertake basic benchmarking

• Subscription service, available to HEI’s and approved stakeholders

• all HEP’s now are automatically subscribed to heidi as part of their HESA subscription. In addition, 18 not-for-profit national bodies are subscribed, including funding councils, research councils etc


Benefits for heidi users

• Saves time and effort trawling books, CD’s and websites to find the data required

• A living system – continually updated and developed

• Benchmarking

• Extensive data content spanning main HESA collections, UCAS applications/acceptances, Performance Indicators, Library Management Statistics, National Student Survey, Research Assessment Exercise data


Jisc / HESA BI Service


Phase 1 (Heidi-Plus)

› Up to date, enhanced service offering analyses, data visualisations and dashboards based on Heidi/HESA

› Ongoing community generated list of questions

› A range of analyses, visualisations & contextual supporting information for safe onward use

› Allows users to generate own analyses / visualisations

› Existing Heidi features to allow on site data export (API)

› Development of training and support materials to enable best use


Phase 2 (Heidi-Lab) Features

› Cross institutional collaborative exploratory work

› Explore new analyses / visualisations & sustainability options based on non Heidi/HESA data sets

› Negotiated access to appropriate data sets

› Produces analyses / visualisations combining sources

› rapid deployment with analysis of demand & options for sustainability

› Nascent national data catalogue for BI in HE

› Explores cutting edge opportunities eg Jisc LAMP


Phase 2 (Heidi-Plus) Features

› Explore a new data capture and integration system to enable peer-to-peer institutional benchmarking

› Data capture to be agile and user controlled

› Provides tools data framework and definitions

› Users choose with whom to share

› A sector led response to the efficiency agenda

› Explore a brokerage service for non partner offers–Data cleansing, warehousing, interoperability

› Other system developments eg User Interface

› Relevant training, support and advice (linked to IS)


Timescales

»Milestones

› Project starts 1 July 2014

› Heidi Plus available mid 2015

› Heidi Lab available mid/2015

› Experimentation projects hired early 2015

› Project phase concludes 31 July 2016


Keep in touch

»[email protected]

»[email protected]

»[email protected]

Title of presentation 00/00/2013 20

mailto:[email protected]



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Questions from us

1. In relation to your current role what is the most burning question that you would like to be able to answer which you are not currently able to? In short: What would you most like to know?

2. Why do you feel you are currently unable to answer the question you outlined above?

3. From your point of view, who in your organisation would be interested in having access to BI information?

4. Thinking about BI systems in your institution, where would you place it right now on a scale from 1 to 10?

5. We are planning to run a survey on maturity of BI systems in organisations. Would you be interested in participating, or know someone who would?


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What sorts of services should the Heidi Plus offer to move people along with BI agenda?

Our suggestions include advice on the following topics:

• Strategy development and the technological enablers to allow implementation

• Records and information management• Data quality assurance• Data governance• Master data management• Vendor selection and purchasing• Developing good data visualisations• Non-technological enablers to for strategy implementation; to

ensure dashboard data is embedded into institutional processes
