HE Performance Lab
An evidence-rich approach to improving financial and organisational performance.
Etio+SUMS HE Performance Lab helps universities address the most common and long-standing institutional challenges around financial efficiency, service quality, and stakeholder satisfaction by providing independent, tailored and, above all, actionable insights.
HE Performance Lab is our new and unique solution focused on improving financial and organisational performance in universities.
It takes an evidence-rich approach to addressing the key challenges of saving money, improving service quality, and increasing stakeholder satisfaction. Most importantly, HE Performance Lab provides universities with actionable insights to drive real-world improvements in performance.
See how the HE Performance Lab has been developed to directly respond to the key challenges and priorities of universities - Nick Pidgeon and David Becker discuss the origins of this unique solution...
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What can your university expect from HE Performance Lab participation?
1. Save money
- Optimise budget allocation and identify cost-saving opportunities.
Using granular financial analytics benchmarked against peer institutions, along with predictive modelling, we provide you with an independent, robust evidence-base to identify actionable savings, identify disproportionate resourcing, bottlenecks and suggest process improvements.
2. Improve service quality & performance
- Transform service provision to meet your university’s KPIs and ambitions.
We show you the relative level of quality your services are providing, and the extent to which they're delivering your desired results. Our nuanced and sophisticated approach recognises the interplay between service levels, resourcing constraints, systems integration and process control. We'll provide you with costed options (and the anticipated ROI) for transformed service provision befitting of a modern and agile HE institution.
3. Increase stakeholder satisfaction & assurance
- Increase satisfaction amongst your students, staff and external partners, and provide the governing body with assurance that the university is operating efficiently, effectively and sustainably.
We set out in detail how your stakeholders’ satisfaction and assurance levels perform in contrast with your peers, triangulating the findings with best practice from across the world to model the options that will take your performance to the next level.
How does HE Performance Lab work?
Our combined team of higher education performance experts will take you through the HE Performance Lab model, based on our widely adopted methodologies, to gather the data and turn it into actionable insights.
This unique service is delivered by our team of analysts, data scientists and consultants - global specialists in higher education performance improvement - all conducting the heavy-lifting so you get the all-important outputs, without having to divert vital resources to the inputs.
We conduct quantitative analysis of your ‘as is’ position and tell you how it compares to relevant comparators globally. Interactive dashboards let you interrogate the granular detail of your resource profile against the overall distribution of participating universities. Qualitative interviews add vital context and rationale to ensure the story your data tells you is sufficiently nuanced.
Insight means very little unless it’s accompanied by actions which lead to improvement. We don’t leave it to you to infer what these actions could be. Rather, we shine an independent spotlight on the actions available to you, including the balance of risk and reward and lessons from those that have been there before you.
When you’ve considered your options we’ll put together detailed simulations about potential future states, complete with interactive ‘what if’ sliders which allow you to measure the impact if, for example, domestic undergraduate student numbers increase by x% whilst international postgraduate taught numbers decline by x%.
High quality analysis is the bedrock upon which an improvement plan is built but a genuine change in your metrics is totally dependent upon change on the ground. Success will likely require excellent organisation design, change management and programme management skills. Our subject experts partner with you to translate theory into reality.
The core value of our product lies in how it changes your institutional performance. We conclude our time with you by showing you the effectiveness of the measures we’ve helped you to introduce. Through the process you’ll be given a clear picture of performance trends and emerging areas of obvious need to focus on.
Now accepting registrations of interest for the 2025 Australian Universities
Benchmarking & Insight Cohort.
We're launching HE Performance Lab this year, and the more universities join, the richer the insights become. Leave your details to be first in line to improve your university's financial and organisational performance.
About Etio+SUMS
As global education specialists, we’ve been helping universities prioritise investment and optimise efficiency for 30 years.
HE Performance Lab is the culmination of the partnership between Etio and SUMS Consulting International, bringing together our complimentary skills and datasets to provide universities with a new, evidence-rich solution to the most common and longstanding challenges in the sector.
The very best of two worlds:
- Our benchmarking approach has been used since 2007 by New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission and since late 1990s in UK higher and further education to make better strategic and financial decisions.
- Our in-depth analysis and recommendations for significant transformation are used by higher education Institutions globally to develop, prioritise and implement strategic change.
Hear Etio's Director of Performance Benchmarking Nick Pidgeon, and SUMS Consulting International's Executive Director, David Becker, describe the combined expertise of the partnership, and what led to the HE Performance Lab being conceived...