Performance Benchmarking
Financial Benchmarking
Enhance your financial performance and make informed resourcing decisions with confidence. At Etio, we specialise in Financial Benchmarking, offering you a thorough analysis of your entire operation against sector benchmarks. Our goal is to elevate the financial health and sustainability of post-16 education providers world-wide.
We diligently collect all necessary data on your behalf, providing meaningful sector benchmark comparisons for up to 750 metrics. Our unique benchmarking model ensures like-for-like comparisons, irrespective of organisational structure, guaranteeing a robust and insightful dataset. This empowers management teams at universities, colleges, and tertiary education institutions to delve into a detailed level of analysis and expert insights, enabling the best evidence-based decisions for enhancing both financial performance and sustainability.
How Financial Benchmarking works for you
Comprehensive resource analysis
Reveal the real cost of delivering each area of your operations and gain granular insight into your cost-base.
- All data gathering and validation carried out by our team of Educational Benchmarking experts
- Like-for-like comparison with other groups of institutions.
- Quality assured data consistency, definitions and granular analysis.
- Built in processes to promote buy-in and ownership, increasing the understanding and impact of the project.
Sector specific comparison
Compare your performance against the most appropriate sector benchmark groups.
- Sector-specific comparisons are delivered via our unique function-specific benchmarking model, enabling meaningful comparison between different organisational structures.
- Evaluate against 750 benchmark metrics for a comprehensive analysis of operations.
- We provide detailed feedback presentations to your key stakeholder group, allowing insightful discussion of the results to inform future action plans.
- Data is made available via our flexible online reporting suite for further interrogation and analysis by your management team.
Preparing for the future
Prepare for sector changes and demographic shifts. Model what your organisation might look like, and use evidence-based insights to start making the necessary changes to your organisational structure and resource levels.
- Bring greater sophistication to income and cost modelling.
- Inform resizing/restructure plans.
- Model the impact of legislation and funding changes
Collaborative group projects
Bring even greater context, understanding, and impact to your Financial Benchmarking analysis.
- Participating in a collaborative group project provides you with additional peer-group specific analysis, giving you even greater context for your results.
- Facilitated peer-group discussions with your counterparts extends learning through the interrogation of project outcomes, areas of spend and the reasons behind certain variances.
Bespoke Consultancy
A deeper dive into your project to give you further insights into specific areas of operations.
- Reveal the true costs of a specific delivery mode - e.g. apprenticeships.
- Apply further metrics to the analysis, such as deprivation indices or student success rates, to truly show which curriculum areas are delivering value for money.
- Tap into our sector expertise to gain further insights into how to use objective comparable data to address your most pressing challenges.
Our Specialists
Nick Pidgeon
Nick and his team specialise in delivering data rich insights to help universities and colleges deliver an exceptional student experience, while thriving financially.
Nick has made his career with Etio, spending 21 years delivering data driven consultancy to colleges and universities. He started off on financial benchmarking projects, making detailed financial and strategic recommendations to all levels of leadership. In 2019, Nick took charge of Etio’s globally market leading student survey business. He is passionate about combining Etio’s financial consultancy and student surveys to help our clients allocate resources to deliver best in class student experience.
Outside of work, you’ll find Nick spending time with his young family. Or running long distances, for reasons he is yet to understand.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
Robin Hallows
Robin boasts over two decades of experience in the tertiary education sector, commencing his journey in 2001. Initially, he spearheaded numerous benchmarking projects, empowering UK further education colleges and training providers with strategic insights. During his tenure in Wellington, New Zealand from 2006 to 2016, Robin pioneered a solution for the Tertiary Education Commission, facilitating comparative analysis of the nation's educational institutions. Following his return to the UK, Robin transitioned to our surveys division, ultimately filling the role of Head of Surveys. He thrives on delving into the data collected from our extensive surveys, delivering impactful presentations to our clientele.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
- Other
Helen Dove
Helen is a Principal Consultant, specialising in Performance Benchmarking across the further and higher education sectors. Helen’s expertise lies in analysing and interpreting data, identifying, and presenting insight and supporting senior leaders to understand and interpret data to inform their decision making. Helen has extensive knowledge of the education sector, a detailed understanding of the issues affecting universities and colleges, and the impact they have on financial management. Helen leads an experienced team of consultants who consistently deliver successful projects to a wide range of education providers and government bodies.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
Guy Perring
Guy has worked in Asia for over 25 years in a variety of roles from teacher to administrator, market researcher to consultant.
He previously worked at the British Council for 12 years in a variety of roles, including leading a Southeast Asian Regional Transnational Education Project designed to offer support for UK and local institutions in establishing sustainable partnerships. He has presented at a number of international conferences including APAIE, Going Global, QS-Apple and the Commonwealth of Education Ministers. He is an alumnus of Manchester and Durham Universities.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
- Other
Adrian Massey
Adrian possesses a wealth of expertise in delivery and organizational frameworks utilised within vocational and higher education institutions spanning Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. He has amassed this knowledge through the establishment of robust, enduring performance benchmarking systems. These systems have proven invaluable, furnishing the empirical evidence crucial for informed investment decisions at both institutional and national funding agency levels.
His tenure at Tribal is marked by the successful delivery of over 500 benchmarking assessments across diverse educational entities. Adrian adeptly translates data into actionable insights, providing the strategic advice essential for sustained performance enhancements. Notably, he has actively contributed to the ongoing evaluation of funding structures within New Zealand's tertiary education system. Moreover, Adrian leverages benchmarking data to advocate for sectoral and funding reforms, with the aim of driving positive change within the education landscape.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
Sam Camden
Sam has several years’ experience in supporting the Higher Education sector, specialising in the delivery of survey and data collection projects.
Since joining i-graduate in 2018, Sam has played a pivotal role in various initiatives, including the renowned International Student Barometer, and AUIDF benchmarking studies.
Through direct engagement with institutions and collaboration with both regional and national education bodies, Sam has developed an in-depth understanding as to the evolving needs and challenges of the sector, and the ways in which our insight can assist the HE community in meeting these.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
- Other
Phillip Moseley
Phil has supported educational leaders and institutions for 20-years. Working in Local Government Phil supported schools and School Improvement teams in measuring performance and identifying intervention strategies to help drive improvement.
Phil moved into benchmarking in 2008, working with Universities and FE Colleges in accessing benchmarking insight, and has led on over 150 individual projects, in addition to co-ordinating group-collaboration and Government-led reviews.
Phil’s work provides key evidence that supports, or challenges assumptions, and with his accompanying experience in contextualising and interpreting results, he continues to offer institutions a foundation to move discussions forward around value for money, cost effectiveness, and learner impact.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
Nannette Ripmeester
Nannette has worked on mobility for study and work purposes for over 30 years. Her love for global mobility was ignited when she worked for 7 years at the European Commission where she was responsible for setting up the EURES database for mobile workers in the EU Member States.
Working for large corporate clients and Higher Education institutions across the globe, she understands what makes people internationally employable, making Nannette a leading expert on mobility for study and work. Her motto has been ‘making mobility work’ whilst constantly listening to the student voice to enable long-term success for international mobility.
Nannette is an appointed member of the supervisory board for Codarts University and involved in the NAFSA Trainer Corps. She has been the Industry Innovator in Residence for Study Queensland 2018-19 with a focus on employability. Nannette thrives when making the connection between education and the world of work.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
- Other
Katie Scarborough
Katie has 18 years consultancy experience, including 14 years in the Higher Education sector. She has worked closely with several institutions over the years, developing a good understanding of the sector and the issues faced. The projects that Katie deliver provide a total health check on the use of resources across whole institutions as well as providing an in depth understanding of both student and staff experience.
Katie is highly skilled at liaising with HE clients and at extracting costing and activity-based information, successfully working alongside academic staff, support service staff and management to consistently apply Tribal’s functional driven model. Katie is also extremely competent in undertaking student and staff surveys for HE institution, facilitating the understanding of international student experiences and the level of internationalisation in the HE sector. Not only is she experienced in analysing large data sets in identifying key messages and trends, she is also experienced in communicating these results both through written reports and verbally, highlighting potential areas for financial and qualitative improvement in order to inform key decision makers in the HE sector.
Specialist Areas:
- Performance Benchmarking
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