University of Wollongong advances learning with analytics

Instrumented: Data from dozens of systems across the university is regularly collected into a single central data warehouse for ongoing analysis.

Interconnected: Users can access reports and scorecards that outline the key performance metrics, and drill down to see more detailed data.

Intelligent: New insights from ongoing analytical research drive operational improvements in numerous areas – from financial planning to traffic management, and energy efficiency to student performance.

Established in 1951, the University of Wollongong is one of the leading academic institutions in New South Wales, Australia. With six campuses, nine faculties, a postgraduate business school and a graduate school of medicine, the university offers a comprehensive range of teaching and research options for undergraduates and postgraduates, both within Australia and offshore. Wollongong has a student population of more than 28,000, of whom 7,446 are international students. It employs over 900 academic staff and more than 1,000 general full-time staff.

The university understands the value of information; it was an early adopter of business intelligence software, and for the past six years it has made analytics a core part of its approach to strategic planning and operational management.

“In 2006 we founded the Performance Indicators Unit, a business analytics competency centre that is independent of the IT and finance departments, and works closely with the planning and strategy teams,” explains Dominic Riordan, Acting Director of the Performance Indicators Unit. “We report directly to the Vice Principal for Administration – effectively the university’s Chief Operating Officer. We provide a wide range of analytics capabilities, including everything from scorecards for the top-level executives and dashboards for managers through to detailed analysis tools for power users. We also build and manage the data warehouse, and we constantly develop new analytical applications to monitor and enhance different areas of the university’s operations.”

Since the earliest days of analytics at Wollongong, the university has been using IBM Cognos^® software. The university has now decided to upgrade to Cognos Business Intelligence 10, the latest version of the software, a decision that will be realised by July 2012.

“We’ve been using IBM Business Analytics software for a long time, and as a result we believe our data warehouse implementation is more mature and wide-ranging than that of many other universities in Australia,” comments Rob Sim, Business Analyst at Wollongong. “Of course we cover traditional areas like finance, HR and student enrolment, but we’ve also developed analytic applications that look at student retention and academic performance, utilisation of libraries and online resources, traffic and parking on campus, and even energy efficiency in university buildings.”

Boosting student retention

Student retention is a hot topic for the higher education sector in Australia, where funding is lost when a student leaves their course early. As a result, the Performance Indicators Unit has made it a top priority.

“The first thing we did was establish a useful and consistent definition of student attrition, so that we could accurately measure how many students were dropping out before graduation,” explains Sim. “Next, we used the Cognos tools to identify which groups of students were dropping out, and when. Our findings confirmed our long-held suspicion that the first four to six weeks of the first semester were critical, and as a result the university set up a program to directly contact students to assist them in ‘staying connected’ to the university. As we go forward, we’ll be able to monitor how effective this approach is, and see if our interventions are leading to increased retention.”

The university also discovered a link between student retention and accommodation: students who live in university accommodation are more likely to perform well and less likely to withdraw from study than those who live in other forms of accommodation. The university’s marketing team is using this insight to market its on-campus accommodation.

Promoting information resources

Another sophisticated analytics project with a bearing on retention involved monitoring students’ usage of library and online resources. The team was able to import data from the library borrowing system into a “library cube” that enables analysis of the number of books each student borrowed over the course of a year. It also used data from the university’s e-learning resource repository to measure how much time students spent using online resources. By comparing this data against students’ marks in exams and coursework, the team was able to establish a strong correlation between usage of these resources and academic performance.

“To take one example, our analytics solution revealed that students who spent more than 41 hours logged into online resources – whom we classed as high users – achieved a pass rate of more than 99.5 percent,” says Riordan. “By comparison, students who didn’t use online resources at all had only an 81 percent pass rate. That means the high users are 40 times more likely to pass than the non-users, which really emphasises the value of these resources to the university and its students.”

On top of the overall findings, the library cube has shown that specific groups of students benefit from book-borrowing and online resources in different ways. Science students gain the most academic benefit from using both libraries and online resources, while arts students gain more from books. These kinds of analysis help the university focus on providing the right mix of resources for each group. And by establishing a baseline for library and online resource utilisation, the university will be able to assess the effects of future initiatives.

Smarter traffic and power

The Performance Indicators Unit has also worked on a number of projects that are not directly related to student or staff issues. For example, by collecting and analysing data from traffic counters at the entrance to the university’s parking areas, the team has been able to identify hot-spots and busy periods for traffic congestion.

“Our analysis showed that traffic was building up because people weren’t able to get out of the campus easily,” says Sim. “As a result the university decided to build an additional exit from the campus, which has significantly reduced congestion at peak times. It has also supported a new car-pooling scheme for students, which is itself now something we can monitor.”

The Performance Indicators Unit also uses the IBM analytics software to monitor electricity usage in campus buildings, combining data from smart meters with information collected by electricity providers. As a result, the university has been able to identify the least efficient buildings and prioritise them in its maintenance plans. For example, if a building is still using old and inefficient air-conditioning units, it will move up the list of priorities for upgrades.

“We’ve also used the energy efficiency analysis to drive changes in behaviour,” says Brad Dixon, Technical Analyst. “For example, our IT policy used to be that PCs should be left on overnight so that the IT team could patch them. But when we looked at the electricity usage, it became clear that this wasn’t sustainable. The policy now is to turn all PCs off at night, and patching takes place just prior to the beginning of the work day instead.”

Promoting self-service

In addition to these special projects, the Performance Indicators Unit also creates a wide range of standard reports and dashboards, as well as providing comprehensive training courses that help users learn how to serve themselves with the analyses they need.

“We have a rotational system within our team, so when a developer completes a new project, they move into a support role for a few weeks afterwards,” explains Dixon. “This ensures that when users have issues, they can speak to someone who really understands the problem and is best-placed to resolve it. We also make extensive use of the Cognos quality management tools, so we receive automatic warnings when a report is failing or not delivering results in a timely way. This enables us to be proactive, and often solve problems before users even know that something’s wrong.”

Planning a better future

For financial reporting, planning and budgeting, the university has recently adopted a further product from the IBM Business Analytics portfolio: IBM Cognos TM1.

“Our previous financial planning solution took a lot of effort to use, and we frequently needed help from the IT team if we wanted to change the model or develop a new type of analysis,” explains Fred Reich, Management Accounting and Systems Manager in the finance department. “One member of our team was keen on TM1 because he had used it before at another company, and when we evaluated the options, we agreed that TM1 seemed like the best choice.”

Working with Cubewise, an IBM Premier Business Partner, the finance team deployed the new software in just two weeks – including training, workshops, model-building, development and production. The workshop approach to development was integral to the success of the project, as it enabled Wollongong to use real business data and scenarios to prototype what would eventually become the production model. Learning how to use TM1 in this way resonated well with the Finance team.

“The key to our success was that we brought the right people to the table and worked very closely and collaboratively with Cubewise to design and deploy the solution,” says Reich. “Cubewise showed us how to use the product with examples from our own data, so we could see exactly how the new solution would work. We then worked with them to build a prototype, and went on to create the actual model. We were learning so much as we went along that now we’re able to manage the TM1 solution on our own, with very little help from our IT team.”

The finance team appreciate the ability to interact with TM1 via a familiar Microsoft Excel interface, which allows them to develop new analyses without in-depth knowledge of the back-end IT systems.

“Finance people love Excel, so it’s been a major selling-point of the solution that we can keep using Excel as the front-end,” explains Reich. “This has lowered any barriers to adoption and helped our users get to grips with TM1 really quickly.”

Sophisticated scenario planning

The university’s budgeting process is now approximately 25 percent more efficient, and the solution enables the finance team to create multiple “what if” scenarios to assess the probable effects of changing economic or social factors on the university’s finances. Previously, generating each scenario would have required a complex and lengthy batch process; with TM1 it can be processed in a matter of minutes.

“TM1 is much faster in most areas,” says Reich. “For example, when we’re doing our monthly financial reports, if we change a journal entry, it gets reflected in the system in about 15 minutes – whereas before it took up to three hours. We can also do our monthly reconciliations about 25 percent faster, which is important not only for our internal financial reports, but also for reports to external bodies such as the Australian Research Council.”

Finally, the finance team has recently launched a TM1 “debtors cube”, which allows the accounts receivable team to monitor unpaid invoices much more easily. It is now considering whether a similar cube might be valuable for the accounts payable team.

The Cognos TM1 solution is currently managed by the finance team, but the Performance Indicators Unit is also interested in developing solutions based on a combination of Cognos TM1 and Cognos Business Intelligence in the near future. An increasing strategic focus on continuous operational improvement within the university means that the Finance, HR and Performance Indicators departments are likely to work even more closely together on analytics initiatives in the future.

“Looking forward, we’re very interested in the potential of TM1 for highly complex what-if analyses,” comments Riordan. “We work closely with the strategic planning team, and we can already think of several areas where they could benefit from a tool like TM1. We’re also interested in some of the IBM Predictive Analytics technologies like SPSS, for example for sentiment analysis on social media. Above all, we’re committed to maximising the value that the University of Wollongong gets from its data, and we see IBM as a vital strategic partner in achieving this aim.”

About Cubewise

Cubewise is a professional consulting firm that specialises in the design and implementation of custom business planning, reporting and analytical applications. Utilising the IBM Cognos platform, Cubewise’s unique blend of skills and expertise in both business and technology differentiate it from other software consultants. As successful finance and business professionals, its consultants approach technology from a business perspective.

Cubewise has implemented some of the largest Cognos TM1 systems in the world in terms of users, data size and complexity. Cubewise has also won IBM’s TM1 Partner of the Year Award twice in consecutive years.

About IBM Business Analytics

IBM Business Analytics software delivers actionable insights decision-makers need to achieve better business performance. IBM offers a comprehensive, unified portfolio of business intelligence, predictive and advanced analytics, financial performance and strategy management, governance, risk and compliance and analytic applications.

With IBM software, companies can spot trends, patterns and anomalies, compare “what if” scenarios, predict potential threats and opportunities, identify and manage key business risks and plan, budget and forecast resources. With these deep analytic capabilities our customers around the world can better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes. For more information please visit: www.ibm.com/business-analytics