University of Hertfordshire Delivers Real-Time Intelligence to Ensure a Successful and Sustainable Business in Increasingly Competitive Global Markets
 
 

University of Hertfordshire Delivers Real-Time Intelligence to Ensure a Successful and Sustainable Business in Increasingly Competitive Global Markets

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The University of Hertfordshire is a leading business-facing university that aims to be innovative and enterprising, challenging individuals and organizations to excel. The University was awarded ‘Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2010’ by the Times Higher Education (THE) and ranks in the top 4% of all universities in the world according to the recent THE, World University Rankings.

The university offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in a full range of subject disciplines and enjoys international recognition for original high quality research. With a student community of more than 27,700, including more than 2,500 international students, it also has a global network of more than 165,000 alumni.

In recent years the University of Hertfordshire undertook a comprehensive replacement program for its core systems. Previously, it operated a combined system for student records, finance, and human resources, but the university decided to replace this with best-of-breed applications for each of the separate functions. Meanwhile, the University of Hertfordshire continues to run its main production databases on Oracle’s SPARC Enterprise M8000 servers, using Oracle Real Application Clusters to ensure maximum scalability, availability, reliability, and speed.

As part of its replacement program and to meet strategic requirements for key performance indicator (KPI) reporting, the university needed to standardize reporting on one platform. It chose to implement Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to provide detailed, real-time reports taken from a range of sources and delivered to management in a standard, easy-to-access way. Access to this information will help the university achieve its strategic goals in an increasingly competitive and financially challenging environment.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from University of Hertfordshire

  • "Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition enables us to deliver key performance data to our senior management in a standard, timely, and accessible way. It will play a critical role in helping us achieve our strategic goals to grow the university over the next five years." – David Ford, Chief Technology Officer, University of Hertfordshire

  • Provide senior management with more meaningful and relevant business intelligence (BI) in an easily-accessed format to assist with strategic goals for improvement and growth
  • Standardize reporting with data extracted from recently-added best-of-breed applications for student records, finance, and human resources
  • Implement a comprehensive and accessible method to measure KPIs as required by the university’s strategic plans
  • Improve financial and credit control with comprehensive and timely reporting on the levels of student debt and outstanding fees students owe the university

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Worked with Oracle Specialized Gold Partner Beyond Systems Ltd to implement Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g
  • Standardized reporting on one single platform to simplify the process, enable a wider number of users to fully access and create reports and to collate and measure data from a number of different sources
  • Delivered reports in a uniform presentation and online, rather than in a mixed presentation by paper or e-mail, as the university had before
  • Enabled senior managers to access current performance data as and when they need it via dashboards rather than through monthly reports, as before
  • Improved performance measurement by linking organizational goals to measurable KPIs to ensure that the university is meeting its strategic goals
  • Helped the university to meet its goals to improve its global reputation and ensure a successful and sustainable business over the coming years
  • Improved management of student debt by collating information from a variety of sources so that staff can address any problems much more quickly and efficiently, assisting with financial and credit controls

Why Oracle

“We chose Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g for two reasons, said David Ford, chief technology officer, University of Hertfordshire. “Firstly, we already had a number of Oracle systems in place including Oracle Database. And secondly, Oracle Business Intelligence proved the most cost-effective option for us."

Partner

The University of Hertfordshire worked with Oracle Specialized Gold Partner Beyond Systems Ltd to implement Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition after Beyond demonstrated its detailed knowledge and experience. A key requirement was to ensure the necessary knowledge-transfer about the Oracle business intelligence solution to university staff, and Beyond worked diligently to assist in this aim.

“In any BI project, it is always difficult to get the definition right at the start,as users and managers may be unaware of the new system’s capabilities,” said Martin Ayre, data warehouse consultant, University of Hertfordshire.  “We developed a prototype as a starting point but there was a very steep learning curve. Beyond helped us through this learning curve and brought valuable knowledge and experience to the project. The Beyond team was always helpful, flexible, and understanding to ensure we achieved the optimum efficiency gains from our initial deployment of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.”