Predicting the future is something we all wish we could do. But to get a
small glimpse of tomorrow, you could do worse than take a quick look around
the foyer of any university campus. There you’ll see the future leaders of
industry and the guardians of tomorrow’s knowledge.
But at these seats of learning, it’s not just the students who seek to
continually expand their knowledge. The universities and colleges themselves
are looking to learn more too, to allow them to predict the future.
The University of
Liverpool has been working with business analytics specialist Barrachd to
develop a new, cutting-edge planning tool that will do just that - allowing
university departments to accurately forecast staff numbers and
expenditure.
The solution created by
Barrachd already allows staff to plan their student numbers throughout the
Planning and Performance Cycle, while testing scenarios to obtain immediate
feedback on the impact of varying student intakes on School and Departmental
headcounts, student FTE and income over a set period.
The system is now being
developed to enable detailed forecasts of staff numbers and expenditure too.
This will allow departments to scenario plan their future staff profiles and
student-staff ratios, as well as model income and expenditure in more detail.
Anita Wright, Head of
Strategic Planning at the University, said: “The planning tool is a key element
in our suite of business intelligence products and has already delivered
significant benefits for our student number planning processes. We are
looking forward to developing the workforce planning model over the coming
months.”
Student recruitment
forecasts based on current applications, offers and decisions are currently
being run through the planning tool to show how these numbers translate into
student FTE and income compared to current plans.
The tool is also being
used by the university’s facilities, residential and commercial services, as
well as student administration and support to understand and plan for
prospective student numbers.
“We want to use our income
streams to invest in the future - to invest in new buildings, in new facilities
or in new residences for the students,” continues Anita. “To do this, we have
to accurately predict how many students are going to join the university. That
allows us to plan the resource we need to teach those student, the space we
need to host them in lecture theatres and how we manage their timetables.”
Previously the University had
been reliant on an Excel model, which had become too big, too unwieldy and
single person reliant – it could take weeks for someone to get an answer to
what should be a relatively simple question. “We can now spend our time
thinking about strategy instead of thinking about single numbers,” adds Anita.
Harnessing the power of
data to accurately forecast future models is allowing the university to
proactively interrogate its data and predict trends and behavior - meaning that
it’s not just the students that are looking ahead to the future.
Here's the University of Liverpool's story
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