Higher Education Business Intelligence Conference Recap

So the conference is over and cards exchanged (photos to come later).

It was really great to see how universities are all going on their journey towards bettering their universities with better systems.

A few key themes came out of the event which I'll share here:

• Universities are all at different parts of their path towards BI systems with some more advanced than others. However the overall industry is definitely further back than the commercial or public sector.
• Building a Business Intelligence capability isn't easy. It's even less so with rigid, traditional systems in place and involves creating buy-in from other departments.
• The process of building a practice of pervasive analytics across universities should not just be the job of one team. It takes a concerted effort to change and reap the rewards.
• The embracing of the cloud by some and keenness to do so by others is a positive step - it will mean less time worrying about infrastructure and resources and more time spent analysing.
• Universities will need easy to use tools that are intuitive by design and powerful.
• Predictive Analytics will be needed in this sector. Especially as it is the next level on the planning pyramid. No longer is it enough to just report or report intelligently (business intelligence) but to actively compete with the growing international market for students, our Australian universities need tools to better forecast their actions to bring more students to our shores.
• The Federal Budget occurred smack bang in the middle of the conference and it's going to be ever more important for universities to understand their data and utilise it to get the best results for their students.
• All of these tools, ideas and actions should be geared towards improving the work of administrators, academics and most importantly, the students. The economy of the future will be better than it's predecessors if we treat these kids like the investments that they are.

I'll leave you with this talk from the esteemed Sir Ken Robinson on Education's death valley.

After watching that you'll see it's not exactly the same thing going on here in Australia but it's good to be aware of the path not to take. The most important thing out of all this is learning that takes place at each institution and the ones that can do so unencumbered because they have systems that save them time, money and give them better insights are the ones that will succeed.


EDIT: The following has been added after since I feel it highly important and related to the changes that will take place in the university education sector going forward.

This talk from Ken comes from 2010 and whilst it seems dated, there still is a need to change mindsets, take action and bring on the revolution.