Last week, our leadership team were welcomed to the National Association of College and University Business Officers Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California. The NACUBO Annual Meeting is the education industry’s largest and best attended event for college and university business officers and provided a great opportunity for the Intellis team to share ideas with higher education leaders.
CEO, co-founder, and Intellis 'icon', Steven Warshaw at the NACUBO annual meeting.
We learnt that across the board, the biggest concern among higher ed business and facilities professionals is the issue of limited budgets: Do more with less, while making your university its best! Yet such funding cuts makes the need to strictly budget time, money and manpower more urgent than ever.
The good news, though, is that Intellis' innovative technologies and platforms in facility management software helps universities and colleges work smarter and more efficiently. Whether the educational institution was growing in enrollments, shrinking in on-campus presence, or facing aging buildings, Intellis' platform offers a efficient, affordable, adaptable solution for facilities and business officers.
After an energizing week of conversation with higher educational professionals, Intellis can report from 2018's NACUBO Annual Meeting that these are the 3 hottest topics in higher educational facilities management right now.
1. Preventive and Predictive Maintenance
When faced with shrinking budgets, it’s tempting to put off general maintenance, system upgrades or building repairs until a future budget cycle — even postpone them indefinitely until funding becomes available. However, when it comes to essential systems such as a malfunctioning HVAC unit, this approach is problematic to say the least. Students and staff shivering for the semester in inadequately heated accommodation? Doors bolted and classes cancelled for a week? Not only do such experiences have a negative impact your bottom line; these kinds of painful compromises stand in the way of what should be at the heart of an educational institution: learning.
This is when an effective Preventative Maintenance program can help. Procrastination is the thief of time - and money - after all. Some operations teams find themselves existing in reactive mode, putting off fixes that can be done today and yet rushing to repair the latest breakdown. PM is the strategy to liberate them. And it is with this in mind that Intellis has developed The FOUNDATION Solution.
With FOUNDATION'S forecast tools, analysts and planners can jump forward and backward in time to understand needs, plan progress, and budget spend at any point. FOUNDATION scenario tools help managers evaluate plan alternatives. Made for multi-site organizations, FOUNDATION can zoom in to higher detail or zoom out for system, building, site, or even city summaries.
2. Be Flexible: The Smart Space Solution
During his keynote, Brian C. Mitchell, Founding Partner of Academic Innovators, stated that "the single most underutilized and overlooked asset that colleges have is real estate. Get creative about how and when you deploy it."
The way in which educators and students use facilities has changed. With the rise of smaller class sizes that emphasize collaboration, there is a reduced need for traditional lecture halls. These changes have led to schools altering existing space to meet their needs. With stretched resources and the drive for cost-efficiency, institutions are repurposing underutilized spaces.
Increasingly, universities are turning to flexible spaces that can have multiple uses, such as modular spaces that are easily configureable to suit the needs of students and educators. For example, by using raised access flooring with displacement ventilation, a space can be inexpensively converted from a 40- to 50-seat classroom to five faculty offices by using movable, interchangeable wall systems. The flexibility to reconfigure space for different uses is essential in today's higher education sector.
3. Business Intelligence: Financial Reports and Capital Planning
Leveraging insightful data analysis and reporting was one of the hottest topics this year. Business Intelligence is your control center for working smarter, not harder. That's why we've made it our mission is to empower institutions be efficient, sustainable and agile enough to make bold business decisions that set your organization up for long-term success. Even under strained budgets and time, with shifting regulations, priorities, and needs, our clients have continuously seen a significant return on investment - as well as improved transparency and efficiency.
In a recent Gallup survey, ninety-one percent of education business officers reported that they must routinely assess the financial health of their institutions by generating monthly financial reports that include long-term projections. These reports take a considerable amount of time to generate. Not to mention the need to create reports that can be shared with diverse stakeholders across the campus, including, the president's cabinet, the governing board, and finance committee.
Our FOUNDATION capital planning software makes generating and sharing reports fast and easy! With FOUNDATION, you can swiftly aggregate data, track project progress and generate different types of reports that can be easily shared with multiple stakeholders throughout your institution and at every level.
We know your institution wasn't founded to constantly manage these reports. Its mission is to empower young people to be the best they can be. The less time you and your colleagues spend on tedious admin task, the more you can focus on delivering a top-quality student experience. Find out how we can help your institution and your students be more successful. Contact us >
Conclusion: Leverage technology for efficiency
Technology should empower your team to improve efficiency and workflow. Staying updated on how to use data and insight tools for facilities is an easy way to cut costs. With the help of enterprise software, like FOUNDATION, facility managers can leverage building data and turn it into actionable insights.
With robust, data-centric work systems tailored to your needs, you won't have to waste the opportunity to achieve more. At Intellis we look forward to seeing the progress educational institutions make across these areas, and we’re proud to be an ally in helping higher education institutions work smarter to reach new levels of success!
Resources
Deloitte blog. "Five Key Trends Affecting the Education Sector". https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/public-sector/articles/trends-affecting-education-sector.html.
Inside Higher Ed. "2018 Survey of College and University Business Officers". https://www.insidehighered.com/node/253636/download/2073c9842ecf4b06137736f977dc7af5.
A. H. Maslow (1943) "A Theory of Human Motivation". Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396. doi:10.1037/h0054346– via psychclassics.yorku.ca.
Building Design and Construction Magazine. "Building the Future: 5 Trends in Higher Education Construction Projects". https://www.bdcnetwork.com/building-future-five-trends-higher-education-projects.
Inside Higher Ed. "Lazy Rivers and Learning". https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/01/17/improving-value-campus-facilities-opinion.
