MENU

Five Questions with Chris Kearns

Altis Consulting, Sydney, Australia

Connect with Chris

An interview with Chris Kearns, Higher Education Practice Lead at Altis.

1. Tell us about what Altis does and the specific assistance it offers its customers.

Altis focusses exclusively on the field of Data & Analytics and has done so since commencing in 1998. We’ve had a strong focus on the Higher Education sector since 2009 including being closely involved with AAIR every year since we first participated at the SIG Forum hosted by Griffith University in 2009. We don’t just turn up to an AAIR event when it suits us; we are there at every SIG and/or Annual Forum to stay up to date with what’s happening in the sector, as well as to meaningfully contribute by presenting with our university customers. Whether it’s Big (or little) Data, on-premise or in the cloud, our team of 90+ dedicated and highly-skilled staff provides services in all aspects of the data and analytics value chain, including: strategy/roadmap engagements, toolset selection, architecture, project management, solution delivery, AI/ML, training, knowledge/skills transfer, and Managed Services. Employing a proven combination of technical skill, expertise, leveraging experience, communication and listening, we deliver results that maximise business performance. Being vendor independent means that we don’t have a software agenda, rather, we are focussed on providing data and analytics solutions that deliver tangible business benefits for our customers. Our core ethos is ‘Connecting with Courage, Heart, and Insight’. In simple terms this means the firm commitment of our team to building lasting relationships with our clients and sharing the responsibility of delivering their outcomes. The diagram below summarises the services we provide.

Diagram showing the services provided by the company, Altis

2. Can you briefly summarise some of your collaborations with universities?

Altis has worked with more than 30 universities across Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, and one collaboration stands out from the perspective of how much interest it has generated in the sector at the time. We worked in partnership with the University of New England in 2010 to develop the Automated Wellness Engine (AWE), a solution that identifies students at-risk of leaving early, and interfaces with UNE’s CRM to allow automated initial intervention communications with these students. The AWE was the first of its kind in Australia, was very well regarded in the sector and is still in use by UNE today. Many Australian and New Zealand universities took inspiration from UNE’s solution in looking to develop their own approach to identifying students at-risk of leaving early. AWE was a true collaboration in that stakeholders from the business and IT worked together to develop the solution from mutual ideas scribbled on a whiteboard.

Photo of Chris Kearns standing in front of an awards wall

3. What do you anticipate the needs of your clients to be in the age of ‘disruption’ in tertiary education? e.g. What are your thoughts around data and analytics for the future?

The needs of our university clients in this disruptive time are many and varied, but can probably be distilled into three main questions, all focussing on data and analytics for the future:

  1. How to do more with less? With government funding effectively reducing, universities have to increasingly rely on data to support the decision-making process, so that they can achieve more with limited resources. Examples of using data to become more effective/efficient include: deciding which courses/units to discontinue; utilising demographic, behavioural, and progress data to help identify students at-risk of leaving early to aid in proactive intervention; optimisation of facilities through analysis of WiFi usage; identifying where students are dropping out of the pipeline in order to change business processes to plug the leaks.
  2. How to sort through the vendor hype and settle on a data and analytics solution that is right-sized and scalable for your university? Data and analytics software and services vendors are constantly coming out with new software/services. On top of that, business solution vendors are now also offering out-of-the-box analytics solutions as part of their SMS, CRM, etc. The challenge for universities is to figure out what is suitable for their needs. How much can you build yourself? Can the vendor tools/solutions do all that they claim? How to handle on-premise and cloud-data sources as well as structured and unstructured data? These are all questions that need to be worked through.
  3. How to get started on a data and analytics journey or how to reset course? The approach to take will depend on where the university is on their journey already, the state of their existing data and analytics solution, the overarching strategic goals of the university, and the degree to which departments/faculties are aligned to the universities priorities for data. Where strategy and priorities are well understood, it might be a case of getting on with delivering the highest priority datasets. Where strategy and priorities are less well understood, it might be time to take stock and seek alignment/consensus on a data and analytics strategy/roadmap.

4.  What has Altis learned from its involvement with the higher education sector in Australia, New Zealand and the UK?

Three key lessons spring to mind:

  1. The higher education sector is very willing to share ideas and best practices. Forums like AAIR are a great way for universities to see what others are doing, share ideas, and interact with vendors working in the space. We are proud to have been associated with AAIR every year since we first attended the AAIR SIG Forum at Griffith University in 2009. I think the sector appreciates the long-term and consistent commitment that Altis has made and will continue to make.
  2. Universities that seek alignment across departments/faculties on a data and analytics strategy and roadmap are more likely to achieve their strategic goals with data. The key is to involve stakeholders from across the university and to have them involved in determining and committing to the prioritisation/reprioritisation of steps in the roadmap.
  3. We’ve found that the Altis way of ‘Connecting with Courage, Heart, and Insight’, forming long-term partnerships with AAIR and universities, and striving to deliver tangible business outcomes for our customers, has proven to resonate well with the higher education sector.

5. How can people connect with Altis?

If anyone would like to get in touch with Altis to learn more about how we’ve helped deliver tangible business outcomes for our university partners and how we might be able to help them, then please get in touch. Chris Kearns Higher Education Practice Lead Altis Consulting +61 2 9211 1522 chrisk@altis.com.au www.altis.com.au Altis has offices in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Auckland and London. To contact the regional manager of any of these offices, please visit the Altis Connect page. Altis Consulting logo

Newsletter

Read the June 2018 AAIR newsletter Right Here, Right Now!

June 2018 Newsletter

Answer 5 Questions

Would you like to feature in the ‘Institutional Researcher’s Corner’ segment of our newsletter, The Institutional Researcher? Contact our trusty editors with the answers to 5 simple questions, and we’ll feature you in an upcoming issue. Email Our Editors

Feature icon

Subscribe to our Newsletter