What have you found to be the key benefits to your institution of using heidi?

The provision of benchmarking data is an extremely powerful means of engaging with groups across the University. It allows us to present management information within an appropriate context and underpins strategic decision making.

What are your institution's key management information processes that are informed by heidi data?

heidi data is used at all levels of our strategic planning process, right through from the comparator analysis that informs development of institutional strategy to the departmental performance profiles and University Key Performance Indicators that measure progress towards achieving that strategy.

Has your institution been able to undertake any further analysis of league tables using heidi?

Where league table measures are not broken down below the institution level, as is the case with SSRs, heidi can be useful in providing a more detailed viewpoint on the subject level picture that informs the overall position. While heidi is constrained by HESA's cost centre groupings, which do not always match functional units on the ground, it can provide a useful starting point for identifying areas of concern and making recommendations on where further effort should be expended.

How does your institution predominately share heidi reports?

Key to Durham's successful adoption and use of heidi has been its status as a fully embedded data source within the existing management information suite. In other words, we prefer to build heidi data into existing management reports and performance profiles, rather than using them as standalone sources of information.

How does your institution ensure that heidi data is used responsibly?

Provision of appropriate benchmarking data in one area can lead to overly optimistic assumptions in others - the obvious example is Science, where cost centres often fit neatly to departments, and Arts, where many departments are represented by a single cost centre. It is important that expectations are managed, to ensure that where benchmarking data is not useful, colleagues are aware of this and do not use it as a basis for decision making.

How does your institution plan to continue to roll out heidi in the future?

Durham will continue to offer free user access to all the data sets contained within heidi, supported by central, approachable expertise. We believe that this will continue to develop an appreciation of performance data at a grass-roots level, with a natural progression towards planning and a strategic overview.

Rob Livermore
Strategic Support Officer
Strategic Planning and Change Unit
Durham University