University Challenge - using analytics to create a model business

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

Find out What's New in BI - 25th June, Edinburgh

Want to find out what's new in Business Intelligence? Join our first, free BI User Group in Edinburgh next month.

Due to popular demand - and the fantastic community that’s growing around our TM1 User Group - we’re launching a new BI User Group, where you can join your peers and discover the latest BI trends and technology from IBM.

We’ll share with you the new Cognos Mobile functionality, delve into geographic mapping and give you the lowdown on the brand-new RAVE Visualisation capability.

Don't just listen to us, though. Hear the real stories behind Business Intelligence and get some great insights to take away too.

Find out more on how Business Intelligence can really turbo-charge your decision-making and register today for our first BI User Group.  

Title: BI User Group

Date: 12.30pm, 25th June 2015

Venue: The George Hotel, George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 2PB

Cost: Free

Protect The Future

An Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure

Run by members for members, credit unions offer ethical loans at favourable rates and by sharing the profits equally, aim to give their savers better rates of interest than banks.  Running a thriving credit union is a bit like balancing a see-saw. On one hand, you need plenty of savers in order to offer loans.  However, on the other you need plenty of borrowers because interest payments fund dividends.  Balancing that seesaw has become increasingly difficult since the economic downturn as many people are nervous about borrowing. There’s also stiff competition from aggressively marketed payday loan firms to contend with.

As a result, when our client George took over as CEO of SPCU, a large Scottish credit union, his biggest challenge was to uplift their flat loan portfolio.  He needed to know:

“How many loans are coming to an end this month? Who’s had a holiday loan from us, but hasn’t had one for two years? Who might need to save, or pay for their children’s higher education?”

With over 9,000 members and a reliance on manual processes, getting the answers was a painful process.  It took two staff, four days to deliver month-end information to the board. For George, this was unacceptable.

There’s no crystal ball in business

This challenge is not unique to credit unions. Every CEO has to ensure the books balance, the pipeline is full, the promises are kept. While there is no such thing as a crystal ball, there’s always plenty of information available.  

From the beginning, George knew he had a rich store of data, but the problem was unlocking it. The answers he needed to actively run, and grow his business were buried in their database, but there was no easy way of accessing them.  He sums up their data dilemma: “We could get the data out, but we couldn’t get it out in time, as soon as we’d output the data it became historical.”

Next best thing to a crystal ball

When George contacted us he was frustrated but he also had a feeling for what was possible.  We had never worked with a credit union before but we were very familiar with their situation.  

We built a holistic layer of technology over their existing database and were able to pull the answers they needed into one web-based report.  As a result, what used to take an analyst the best part of a week now takes under an hour.  George explains: “I can see whether we are up, down, above or below target. I’ve got a level of grip over the business sitting at my fingertips. I can see the entire financial health of my organisation on one screen.”

By improving their insight into their data, the business has now saved 14 days a month of staff time.

The secrets are not in the data, but the insight

From our experience we know that access to the data is just the beginning, the key is what you do with the answers now you have them.

George sums up the challenge facing most CEOs: “In business, when a crisis happens, we're always saying to ourselves, ‘I wish I'd known that last week’ — but most of the time, the answer was there in the data.”

That’s why we ask all our customers: “What do you need to know before it’s too late?"

Customer Story - George Nedley from the Scottish Police Credit Union

Sensing the Future

You might have thought that a fridge was only good for keeping food and drinks chilled? Wrong! These days it’s doing more. It’s communicating. With only a couple of sensors and some simple software, it has become a smart fridge, that can let you know when to clean it, order food in and suggest recipes.  

Likewise, the new smart kettle – the iPot -  not only does it boil water, it sends a signal to a server every time it’s switched on. So now, just like you do with emails, you can log in and see i-pot usage data for the day. But why would you do this?

Well, imagine you have an elderly relative who lives alone: this is an innovative and useful way to check all is well and they are up and about, merrily boiling water.  

More and more devices are becoming part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its only just beginning. The idea is that millions of smart “things” are connected via sensors and software, and that they will provide us with an ecosystem of information that will enrich our lives, help us make better decisions, navigate the world more easily and with less friction.

Of course this means that the IoT will generate oodles of new data. When lots of data is created, the two data twins “security” and “opportunity” show their faces. Data privacy questions abound, but also the scope for strong data analytics is given.

From the security angle, it is only recently that the UK government announced it will work with OfCom to regulate the IoT across all industries in a bid to ensure data privacy and available capacity for all these connected devices. http://goo.gl/guqufX   Ensuring security, reliability and data protection across more than 40 million devices already connected, will be no mean feat, especially since predictions estimate the number of connected gadgets will increase by 800% in the next 8 years.

If those numbers are startling, then consider the opportunity angle: All this increased functionality means that gadgets and everyday appliances are communicating and churning out data, but in a world where 90% of all data was created in just the last 2 years, who is listening?

Can you have too much data? We have spoken to our customers and not one is crying out for more data. Our customers know they have valuable information about their business in Finance, CRM and ERP systems. Data isn’t the problem - it’s lack of insight.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, it’s difficult to fit the pieces together when you are just guessing what the picture looks like. You can’t tell what will happen next, if you are about to run out of stock, about to lose a customer or make the wrong decision.  By piecing together the puzzle of their data, we help our customers find out exactly what they need to know, so they can act before it’s too late.

Information is in disparate systems that are different and disjointed.  The problem is that people just can’t access that data quickly enough. In fact, many still lack the technology to turn the vast amounts of data they generate into valuable information. Using analytics we help our customers access the right information at the right time.  

More and more businesses are turning to Business Analytics to harness data for precise decision making to improve performance, increase output and reduce costs.

TM1 User Group - Agenda now available

Only 5 weeks to go until the TM1 User Group on the 7th of May, and it looks like it's going to be another varied and interesting session.  The IBM Product Manager will be attending to let us know what's planned for the next release and our customer Redefine BDL will be telling their TM1 story.

Is this for you?   Well, if you are currently using TM1 or even just thinking about it, then definitely. This is a great opportunity to hear from other TM1 users, to share experiences, ask questions and get some hints and tips from the experts.

For more details and to register your place, click here

Hope to see you on the 7th of May!

Next TM1 User Group - 7th May 2015

We have just confirmed the date of the next TM1 User Group.  It's taking place on Thursday 7th May at the Thistle Hotel, Cambridge Street, Glasgow.  Agenda details to follow, but we definitely have the IBM developers attending to let us know what's coming next from IBM, we'll have a demo of our new cash flow module as well as an unique TM1 customer story.  Please save the date in your diary and check back soon for registration details.  Look forward to seeing you on the 7th May.

Barrachd Wins IBM Choice Award for Marketing Excellence, Europe

Announced at the IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, IBM's Choice Awards recognize a select number of IBM Business Partners who have demonstrated business excellence in delivering IBM-based solutions resulting in exceptional client experience and business growth. The IBM Business Partners who win Choice awards exhibit IBM values in all client interactions and achieve common business goals, resulting in superior customer satisfaction and mutually significant business impact. The Choice Awards are selected by IBM leadership in each geography and are given to Business Partners across a range of categories, recognizing their working relationships with clients and demonstrated skills in selling IBM solutions.

  "The IBM Choice Awards honor Business Partners from each geography who have upheld a firm dedication to client satisfaction in delivering IBM-based solutions," said Marc Dupaquier, general manager, IBM Global Business Partners.  "We’re thrilled to honor Barrachd for serving as a trusted advisor to our clients while continuing to drive business growth.”

“We are delighted to have won this prestigious award, which highlights the strategic importance of the marketing function within our business. The IBM Co-Marketing program gives us the freedom to promote our unique brand in the analytics market as one of IBM’s leading Business Partners,” said Grant Smith, director, Barrachd. “At Barrachd, we are always looking to take new innovation to our clients, and consider our relationship with IBM key to that. Our expertise, combined with IBM's ground-breaking technology, is a winning combination.”