In a competitive international market, every university is seeking to find its edge. Whether it’s improved academic performance, higher student satisfaction or increased efficiency, your starting point has to be a robust understanding of your baseline data.
Maximising the value of your data means turning it into high quality, actionable insight. These insights are almost limitless, pinpointing everything from where you may be over-resourced to untapped growth markets and the price elasticity of tuition fees.
Ultimately, high quality business insight ensures you build your plans on a solid platform of evidence.
SUMS’ approach is grounded in our belief that any investment you make in business insight should lead to insightful and actionable outputs, in a way which minimises time commitment of your staff. We reject a ‘one size fits all’ approach: our meaningful opportunities analysis is tailored to take account of your unique university characteristics.
High quality analysis also shines a light on income generating and diversification opportunities. We’ve delivered bespoke assessments for providers in markets all across the world. We’ve conducted price sensitivity reviews of fees for multiple institutions. We verify impact and growth to provide evidence of potential.
SUMS’ expert consultants and analysts have a proud track record of delivering world class insight in a way that enables robust management decision-making.
We provide bespoke, actionable insight across almost all areas of your university provision. We’ll triangulate our analysis with good practice from the higher education sector and beyond, without burdening your existing time.
SUMS provided impactful, cross-institutional insight to inform the future of professional services. We analysed the strengths, deficits and costs of their existing provision and made evidence-based recommendations for operating model reform. This included development of bespoke dashboards through Tableau.
Our deep analysis of one university’s non-pay profile identified a realisable ROI of 3:1, whilst another estimated annualised ongoing saving levels averaging £1.4m. At a large modern university we identified recurrent savings opportunities of £15m per annum. Our analysis at a smaller provider set out three scenarios which offered cashable savings of £2.2-2.8m, with a potential additional £6m income per annum through more targeted activity.
SUMS explored where and why the institution’s resourcing and costs were out of line with selected comparator institutions, considering the extent to which it was a result of strategic investment choices. Quantitative analysis was triangulated through staff interviews to give better context and verify pain points. Our recommendations included a proposal for a bespoke approach to the development of the target operating model.
SUMS conducted an analysis of the participating universities’ medical school resourcing, combining internal Finance and HR data with relevant external data sets. We unearthed insights and comparisons that individual institutions were otherwise unable to access. We compared institutions at a level of granularity unavailable through published statutory data. SUMS assessed the full economic cost of each medical school.
Whether you need an in-depth analysis and recommendations for significant transformation, or a more high-level review from a critical friend, we have the expertise to support you at every stage. In designing our support, we bring together higher education-specific insight from our comparative research and benchmarking, and world-leading effective practice from other sectors and internationally.
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