Budgeting constraints in higher education: Magnified by siloed data and project management inefficiencies

Australia’s education system is an economic powerhouse. It’s a leading export, and builds the qualified workforce that unpins industry growth. It also fuels innovation — Universities Australia estimates that for every $1 invested in university research and development, $5 is returned to Australia’s economy.

Yet, education providers are feeling the pinch.

The hoops you need to jump through for government support are in flux. Regulatory reforms add to increased competition for funding and students, and increased compliance obligations. Plus you’re dealing with overworked staff, students clamouring for more inspired study experiences, and employers with rapidly evolving skills needs.

Discover why it’s never been more important to overcome data silos, inefficient collaboration processes and haphazard reporting within your educational organisation, and how to do it well.

Disconnected projects and people drives reputational risk

Universities are anxiously waiting to see how the ambitious targets and changes to funding arrangements from the Universities Accord reforms are implemented. Meanwhile, student visa crackdowns and proposed caps on international student numbers have created uncertainty and fears that some higher education campuses will need to cut staff or close entirely.

The threat of scaled-back income has brought productivity sharply into focus.

You can’t satisfy funders, attract research partners and excite students on a limited budget if the way you work is inherently inefficient. But too many educational bodies risk fading into obscurity due to:

• Fragmented views across departments, such as progress across a portfolio of research, curriculum development or compliance projects. Risks are missed, outcomes are delayed or compromised, and your reputation as an educator or commercial partner suffers.  
• Lack of enterprise governance of project-based work, so high-level objectives, data, and budgets don’t inform daily tasks. This is often illustrated by a lack of integration between ERP/finance systems with everyday digital tools and communication channels. 
• Complex, multi-step workflows across large, cross-functional teams using a variety of tools, which creates data silos, operational inefficiency, and knowledge gaps that lead to poor decisions or mistakes — which leads to rework or lost opportunities.

Wasteful disorganisation makes it nearly impossible for many educational organisations to benefit from economies of scale. Instead, costs climb the larger you grow, because more people and more projects add more complications.

Improving collaboration in higher ed for better outcomes

Naturally, you’ll already have collaboration and project tools in place. But rarely will it be an enterprise-grade solution that helps employees move fast and with assurance, while providing control and visibility across all programs of work and reporting spheres.

Chief academic strategist at the Higher Education and Research Group (HERG), Keith Houghton, says producing education and research outcomes at a lower cost is key to unlocking the discretionary funding needed to forge ahead of competitors.  

“So, higher productivity can result in a university unlocking funding for strategic redirection – for example, into projects lifting performance – and affecting the achievement of strategic goals, including, for some universities, global rankings,” according to Houghton.

Consistent processes, workflows, communication and reporting organisation-wide give education providers the edge needed to: 

• Expand partnerships and commercial opportunities: You’ll be better placed to increase revenues through effective learning and research project delivery, and to identify and coordinate profit-generating alliances with other providers - such as Vocational Education and Training (VET) -,  the commercial sector, and industry.
• Optimise systems to support better business models: Enterprise project management lays the groundwork for software consolidation and improved data connectivity. You can run a leaner business and empower staff to focus on strategic work and the student experience.

As Houghton warns — even the most productive universities can’t expect equal efficiency across all areas of the campus — and need to seek out increasingly granular gains to advance their position in the market.

There’s also a growing need for education providers to streamline work in order to retain and develop their employees. For instance, the TAFE sector has been boosted by the Australian Government’s investment in Fee-Free courses, but 85% of TAFE employees feel the pace and intensity of their workload has increased due to admin and expanded responsibilities.

A comprehensive work management system, like Smartsheet, makes getting stuff done easier, which eases overwhelm. That way, talented professionals and teaching staff are more engaged in the core activities that deliver value and keep your institution competitive.

Robust work management key to leading education sector

Improving how your educators, researchers and corporate teams operate — while giving them the headspace to continually adapt to the needs of diverse stakeholders — requires mature systems for efficiently managing work, collaboration and performance reporting.

Institutions that introduce Smartsheet can almost instantly uplift productivity by leveraging features such as: 

• Simple data connections with your ERP and other systems, for more data-driven decisions at the grassroots level guided by visibility into strategic goals and top-line budgets. 
• Project workflow automation for issuing reminders, prompting approvals, or delivering updates including multiple actions and conditions to streamline time-consuming manual tasks. 
• Centralised control over user access, unified project communications and feedback, and dynamic views that simplify what data people see to enhance best-practice collaboration.
• The ability to link and easily roll up granular task-level data from any and all projects for institute-wide alignment and accuracy of performance and compliance reporting. 

If you want to bring efficiency and scale to your educational institution, contact the Smartsheet team today.