The value of independent and objective benchmarking to FE colleges.
Why our partner colleges enjoy the best value-for-money method of accessing the detailed and credible insight their leaders need to inform strategic decisions.
Who are Etio?
Etio (formerly Tribal Education Services), part of Tribal Group plc, have been the leading provider of benchmarking information to UK colleges for over 25-years. The expertise, energy, and diligence remains, but with change comes opportunity.
What’s going to be different?
Our partner colleges trust our methodical approach that not only means we do the heavy lifting when it comes to transforming data into insight, but also delivers highly credible and objective reflections. Our unique approach to capturing and providing benchmarking data will continue, but will be elevated by:
- Increasing our value for money. We are continuing to improve our own efficiency to offer colleges even greater value. A more flexible approach to college data submission, a more effective analysis and reporting process, improved outputs, and increased transparency of results are improvements that have enabled us to better support our partner colleges.
- Embracing the benefits of college collaboration. We will continue to bring colleges together to discuss more openly the impact of different approaches to shared challenges, using our benchmarking insight as a foundation for that discussion and finding a quicker answer to what works well elsewhere
- Enhancing access to insights through our business intelligence capabilities. Our online platform Benchmark+ has already begun to alter in its appearance and we anticipate additional changes to be shared with our partners as we further incorporate business intelligence tools into our outputs.
Low-effort access to consistent, credible, and actionable financial insights.
Colleges have access to lots of data but not to lots of resource or time to collate, interpret and communicate what the data says. There is little control over the quality of comparative data used to inform decision making, meaning drawing reliable conclusions is problematic due to unaccounted context or organisational and size differences.
- We produce the most credible benchmarking data. We categorise each college’s activity according to a consistently applied model.
- We remove the effort and uncertainty of accessing and translating data. We acknowledge that colleges are resource-light, so we do the heavy lifting in terms of creating a level playing field and ensuring all providers are viewed through a consistent lens.
- We lead on the interpretation of results and help colleges communicate key messages across management teams, providing context and narrative alongside measurable outputs.
- We provide an independent voice that provides the necessary objectivity, reinforcing internal messaging whilst also challenging commonly held assumptions.
- We facilitate a collaborative and more open approach to benchmarking. We share evidence of effective practices whilst also strengthening a collective voice, bringing focus to the shared challenges caused by the environment colleges operate within.
What do our partners benefit from?
Our partner colleges continue to trust us to deliver their benchmarking data for several reasons:
OUR PEOPLE: Our highly experienced team are personable, accessible, and extremely knowledgeable. Our team is committed to delivering value for money and benefit from unparalleled experience in providing and interpreting UK college benchmarking data.
OUR APPROACH: We don’t just hand over some data, we tell the story and bring it to life, delivering key messages clearly, supported by a credible and objective data-collection process. Those messages are delivered by us as our partner’s independent experts and collectively these features save time and remove pain.
OUR FLEXIBILITY: We don’t determine when our partners should submit data. Colleges periodically submit academic year data so we can maintain a view of the college through our lens, but we are mindful of conflicting priorities and the importance of timing. We work with our partners to find the best time to submit data and processes aren’t unnecessarily time-consuming or difficult.
OUR FORM: We’ve led on the provision of benchmarking data for UK colleges for over two decades, and with that legacy comes trust. For some colleges that have used other methods to access insight; they have returned to choose Etio as their trusted partner knowing that they can consistently rely on our experience, knowledge, and approach.
OUR VALUE: We remain the best value for money method of accessing the detailed and credible insight college leaders need to inform strategic decisions. Our partners receive insight into the whole college operation, including academic department analysis, with the data categorisation driven by our team, outputs communicated by our team, and with access to an online portal to view those outputs managed by us.
What do our partners say?
“We benchmark to find out where we're strong and where we're weak in terms of financial efficiency, and that's really important because it gives us a steer as to what our priorities are in terms of improving our internal efficiencies; where we're comparable with the sector; where we're doing better than the sector; where we're not doing as well as the sector. I think it tells us more; we get more rich information.”
“Beyond any shadow of a doubt, I would recommend benchmarking to all Scottish colleges that are looking to overcome the huge financial challenges we have in this sector. This service provides a unique insight into efficiency levels within colleges, which is unrivalled in its ability to identify opportunities for improvement. Benchmarking is a powerful business improvement tool for individual colleges – and could really help our sector as a whole.”
“Ultimately this is a tool designed to do a very specific task and it does it in a very helpful, clear, objective way. What we’ve got with that is some helpful comparison and granularity in terms of how we’re operating financially as an organisation to support any of our detailed conversations.”