Software package and information systems

Tender description

The University of Leeds (UoL) aims to support its strategic objective to deliver streamlined, agile and responsive processes, systems and services by procuring & implementing a Solution that will enable the institution to better understand, scrutinize and challenge the deliverability of research and student number plans, improve tracking and forecasting against strategic ambitions in the areas of research funding and student recruitment, and better inform timely strategic decision making in response to the data. The University of Leeds (UoL) aims to support its strategic objective to deliver streamlined, agile and responsive processes, systems and services by procuring & implementing a Solution that will enable the institution to better understand, scrutinize and challenge the deliverability of research and student number plans, improve tracking and forecasting against strategic ambitions in the areas of research funding and student recruitment, and better inform timely strategic decision making in response to the data. The Planning & Forecasting Solution should be able to support: -Student number and fee income planning, forecasting and reporting -Research grant income and recoveries planning, forecasting and reporting -Income & Expenditure consolidation and financial reporting -Potential for future extension into resource planning, financial planning and resource allocation. The above activities are currently manual, inefficient, they lack transparency and are unable to flexibly respond to the challenges of the Higher Education environment. We expect the Planning & Forecasting Solution to integrate with the existing UoL systems via API’s/web services in order to be able to extract various types of data sets as well as being able to import/export data with external sources (i.e. UCAS, HESA, demographics, etc) via spreadsheets and flat files. It should be able to plan at a lowest level of data providing bottom-up and top-down planning capability, rapid aggregation and drill-down functionality. It should support target setting, scenario planning, flexible modelling and forecasting at different levels. It should also allow in-cycle and real-time changes/impact visibility, workflow management and historical view for audit purposes. It is expected the Planning & Forecasting Solution will be used by a large number of users across multi-site locations and it should support simultaneous entries with a user-friendly interface. In view of the uncertainty within the HE environment we would expect to see changes in the planning and reporting on student loads and fees, therefore this Solution should provide enough flexibility to deal with new income models over time and offer opportunity for further enhancements. In that regard the University will be holding a ‘Supplier Event’, to undertake market engagement based on the development of the requirements up to the release of the OJEU Contract Notice. To help the UoL to plan this event, we request organisations wishing to participate in the ‘Supplier Event’ to notify us by e-mailing d.mclaren@leeds.ac.uk for event details. A call to competition will be made by means of a Contract Notice. Participation or non-participation in the Supplier Day will in no way effect the outcome of any future formal procurement process.