TRANSFORMING HIGHER EDUCATION DATA PROCESSES
Higher Education Student number planners face a difficult task in implementing systems of enrolment of their students. Sending out enrolment acceptances can be a worrisome guessing game. If too many are sent out, the university will have to re-organise resources in order to accomodate the excess students. This can be a massive logistical and fiscal ordeal. If too few acceptances are sent out, the university is not maximising its resources and will lose money from the lost tuition fees. Higher Education institutions have procedures put in place surrounding data collection and governance, so a solution has to have the flexibility to be implemented within existing structures and be compatible with existing data sources/formats.
OUR SOLUTION
Billigence’s experienced consultants have developed a Higher Education Student Number Planning Solution using our software partner Alteryx. The solution, which is demonstrated in the video to the right, provides Higher Education Institutions with a data-driven model to better predict the amount of students needed to be enrolled in its courses. The self-service model is entirely code free, and is designed to be maintained by business users. It is fully customisable to the needs of your business, with the ability to connect to a multitude of data sources. The workflow can be amended and transformed, giving it the flexibility to adapt to inevitable changes that will occur. Furthermore, processes can be automated and workflows are repeatable. This means that arduous and repetitive data preparation tasks can be avoided and minimised. The solution is also compatible with visualisation tools such as Tableau, to allow for further analysis.
ISSUES AT HAND
We understand the complexity involved in student number planning.
It involves an enormous amount of variables, including:
How many students do we have / How many are coming back?
Undergraduate courses vary from 1 to 7 years
Students transfer between courses of differing lengths of time
What is meant by ‘students’? There are many different types (part time/full-time/external/overseas…)
How many new students will we get?
Intake targets at student type and course level
What fees will they pay?
By course, student type and by cohort
What will they study when they are here?
Module choices define where money goes – need to apportion funding to appropriate faculties
There can be a combination of over 200,000 module choices broken down by course, student type and stage
THE BUSINESS PROCESS
IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH
Prerequisites
Complete the Implementation prerequisites
Prepare for proof of concept (obtain accesses, map processes)
Proof of Concept
Start with FREE trial of Alteryx
Build skeleton of model
Prove Alteryx is the right solution
Develop and Deploy
Purchase 1 Alteryx Designer License
Build fully working automated solution based on requirements and visualise results for analysis
Deploy the model
Training of users for self-maintenance
Advanced Shareable Solution
Purchase Alteryx Server license along with a few more designers
Easily share the model with others
Give other departments the access to build their own
Leverage Alteryx for other processes
THE ALTERYX SOLUTION
Advantages
Self service model maintained internally
No programming skills needed
Fast Engine, repeatable workflows
Combine Data sources
What-if scenario planning and predictions
Fast Deployment
Single point of truth
“Billigence have proven themselves to be a strong and consistent partner, always accommodating and delivering value above and beyond our expectations whenever there’s a need. We have built a strong relationship with the team which will continue to grow as Billigence support our strategic objectives towards becoming a data driven University.”
“Getting Billigence on board has proved to be an excellent decision. They’ve had the skills, experience and tools to tackle some of our long-standing data challenges and quickly solve them. They’ve really moved our management conversations forward, busting some myths and helping us to focus on the real challenges.”
“Billigence’s approach to enabling my team to use Alteryx has been first class. We never felt lost in the complexity of the process and Billigence was able to teach us and show us what we needed to do simultaneously. It was also great fun. We made far more progress in one working week with Billigence than we had dreamed was possible at the start of the project. Undoubtedly we will become avid Alteryx users and keep our link to Billigence’s expertise on student number planning to ensure our University prospers.”