Analyse over 1,500 benchmark metrics to inform your strategic financial planning and make smarter investment and resourcing decisions.

Tribal Benchmarking provides organisations with a comprehensive analysis of both financial and educational performance. It supports education leaders in making the informed strategic decisions to drive organisational improvement by using over 1,500 benchmark metrics across all areas of operation. Our consultants work collaboratively with our clients to validate data and to deliver feedback workshops to ensure maximum benefit from the process.

Tribal’s proven financial benchmarking methodology is rooted in 25 years’ experience working with universities in the UK, where we have worked with 50% of universities, and in New Zealand, where our national contract has been renewed for fifteen successive years.

Features

Product Features

  • Comprehensive resource analysis

    • Reveal the real cost of delivering each area of operation
    • Identify opportunities for financial savings
    • Confirm specific investment needs
  • Sector specific comparison

    • Compare against sector trends, peer groups and “best practice”
    • Evaluate distance travelled by comparing year on year performance
    • Compare the performance of teaching departments against sector benchmarks
  • Return on investment

    • Measure completion, retention and progression rates across the student cohort
    • Align educational performance with financial analysis to assess return on investment
  • Preparing for the future

    • Shape your cost base to improve student outcomes
    • Model the impact of future financial change
    • Support budget setting to achieve financial and educational targets
Testimonilas

Quotes

Universities turn to financial benchmarking to support robust decision making and optimise their finite resources. Below we hear from 3 senior leaders why it's so relevant to their institutions.

IDENTIFYING THE SOURCE OF ISSUES

"If you've got limited resources, which most of us have, it tells you, for example, there's something going on with payroll in those four departments or that faculty; or there's something wrong about why we're investing so much in that specific area that students don't think is great. So, it lets you know you've got an issue and it tells you where to look."

INFORMING STRUCTURAL CHANGE

“It has been really helpful – it has been socialized across the university in terms of the management structures and non-execs governance structures. It has really started a debate and given us a good, rich data source for making structural changes - looking at where we are at high cost, and helping us better understand that.”

GAINING AN EDGE IN DECISION MAKING

“There's invaluable information there in terms of the size and cost of teams relative to benchmark and salary levels, etc, that data can prove to be a valuable source of data alongside other pieces of information and help inform the decision-making process. It gives me an edge in decision making.”

Download our white paper

For an exploratory conversation about our Financial Benchmarking service and how we might start to help universities/TAFEs in Australia, contact Nick Pidgeon, Head of Benchmarking & Surveys.

FAQs

  • How is the service delivered?

    Source data is from your existing core systems. The data validation and categorisation is carried out onsite by our experienced consultants, and results are delivered through onsite feedback presentations and through our Benchmark+ web portal.

  • How long does a project take?

    It depends on the size of the university or college. Commonly a project will take 2-4 months from start to finish, including 20-30 person days supplied by Tribal consultants.

  • What’s the return on investment?

    On average we identify opportunities for savings equivalent to 3% of turnover, as well as identifying areas where further investment will make the largest impact

  • How much does it cost?

    It depends on the size of the organisation.

  • What about confidentiality?

    The sensitive nature of much of the data that we require means that encrypted file transfer is essential. Securesend removes the risk associated with data transfer by unencrypted email, and has the additional benefit of being able to reliably handle large files.

    Your results will feed into the Tribal databank to form part of our anonymous comparator averages; we will never share your results individually.