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Nottingham Trent University plans for top of the class performance

UK university chooses Cognos, an IBM company, for improved planning and decision-making

December 01, 2008

Nottingham Trent University is standardising on IBM Cognos 8 Planning to drive better performance in an increasingly competitive higher education market.

The platform will be used for planning across all areas of management. Staff will be able to run ‘what-if?’ analysis when making choices about how to invest the university’s resources. They can easily test the potential outcome of multiple scenarios, which will support critical decision-making around, for example, which courses to launch or how many student places to offer.

In the long-term, the implementation will help the management team keep performance on track with its strategic plan. This lays out clear goals on everything from teaching and research through to student satisfaction.

IBM Cognos 8 Planning will replace spreadsheets as the requirements for management planning become more demanding.

“As a university, our mission is to deliver education and research that shape lives and society. We will give our students the best education possible through excellent knowledge sharing, in the ideal environment,” said James Lacey, director of finance, Nottingham Trent University. “We want to ensure our colleagues have the quality of information they need to make the right decisions.
“We continually set high standards and clear goals for our university,” Lacey continued. “IBM Cognos technology will help us to ensure that we meet the targets we set.”

In a unique approach, teams from IT, finance, HR and university registry have been jointly involved in both choosing and rolling out the system.

“The only way we can achieve our goal of better information management for all staff is if everyone works together as one team to drive this forward,” said David Swayne, director of information systems, Nottingham Trent University.

Swayne continued: “We are determined to choose best-of-breed systems for each of our information management needs. When it comes to planning, the robust IBM Cognos platform was the clear choice for our planning needs.”

“Students are becoming more discerning about their higher education choice,” said Ged Simmons, Country Manager, UK and Ireland, Cognos. “Nottingham Trent University is tackling the challenges head on. By choosing IBM Cognos 8 Planning, it is on its way to achieving first-class performance management for all of its students.”

About the company

About Cognos, an IBM company:
Cognos, an IBM company, is the world leader in business intelligence and performance management solutions. It provides world-class enterprise planning and BI software and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. Cognos was acquired by IBM in January 2008. For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/ and http://www.cognos.com

About Nottingham Trent University:

Nottingham Trent University is a large, diverse and modern university with a mission to deliver education and research that shapes lives and society. It was named top ‘new’ university in this year’s The Good University Guide.

Its students are well placed to thrive in the job market, largely because of the institution’s close links with business and emphasis on work placements. Nottingham Trent University has nurtured close-working partnerships with more than 6,000 businesses, public and private sector organisations across the UK and globally. Consequently, it is the third largest provider of work-based learning opportunities in the UK. It is also one of the most successful universities for graduate employment. Nearly 98% of its students are employed or progress into postgraduate education within six months of graduating.

Contact details

Steven George or Lorna Hughes at LEWIS
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7802 2626
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7802 2627
cognos@lewispr.com
Internet: http://www.lewispr.com

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Nottingham Trent University plans for top of the class performance

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