Unearth Your ENTIRE Hidden Economy Quickly
With Rapid Insights
Providing you with all the data on revenue, expenses and margins for all programs in the entire institution (plus all associated courses) allowing you to perform analysis to optimize these programs to maximize margins while staying true to your mission.
Are you inundated with ad-hoc program and course financial report requests? Save significant time with a pre-built centralized, standardized and systemized model of your entire institution with all the data you need to run rapid reports in minutes not days or weeks!
Best performing Financial teams spend more time on analysis and less time on data gathering. Let us do the data gathering, cleansing and modelling for you.
Would you like to see all of your Revenues, Costs and Margins for every Program and Course across your entire institution in only 4-7 weeks?
What you can’t see is costing you.
Universities are making high-stakes decisions using incomplete data.
The real drivers of cost and margin are hidden.
Does this sound familiar?
A university is in a financial crisis, the do everything “right” on paper:
- Cut Programs
- Reduce Staff
- Streamlined Operations
Yet despite all of this the financial situation didn’t improve, in fact it got worse!
So what went wrong?
The assumption was simple, if we reduce costs, we improve financially, but that assumes costs are a problem! Whereas some costs are hugely beneficial and they drive enrolment, growth and supports long-term resilience.
You’re Managing the Visible Economy
Financial reports show:
- Aggregated costs
- Averaged margins
- Allocated overhead
But they don’t show:
- True subject-level profitability
- Cross-subsidies between programs
- Real overhead consumption
That’s your hidden economy!
When You Cut a Program:
- You lose 100% of the revenue
- You remove some costs
- But much of the overhead remains
Then it gets redistributed.
Result:
- Remaining programs look more expensive
- Margins shrink
- The problem gets worse
You Can’t Fix What You Can’t See
Without visibility:
- Good programs look bad
- Bad decisions look logical
- Strategy becomes guesswork
This isn’t a reporting issue.
It’s a visibility gap.
See the Economics Beneath the Surface
Pilbara Insights reveals:
- True program and subject margins
- Cross-subsidies across your institution
- Actual overhead consumption
So you can act with clarity—not assumptions.
Make Decisions That Actually Improve Performance
- Protect high-value programs
- Avoid unintended consequences
- Target the real cost drivers
- Build sustainable financial outcomes
Let us do all the heavy lifting for you!
We know exactly:
- What specific data is required from a wide-range of higher education source systems.
- How to stitch all this disparate data together, cleanse, transform and load that data into the model.
- What drivers (allocation methods) are required to ensure proper cause and effect relationships.
- What standard reports are required for initial analysis.
Solutions tailored to support every stage of your institutions journey
- Financial Data
- Student Data
- Financial Data
- Student Data
- HR Data
- Timetable Data
- Financial Data
- Student Data
- HR Data
- Timetable Data
- Facility Data
- Executive, or
- Strategic Models
- CO2 Equivalent data (Electricity / Natural Gas)
- Water
- General Waste
- Recycling
- Carbon Offsets
(time to implement)
Days
Weeks
Months
Custom
Custom
Rapid Insights example reporting
Please click on the interactive report below to explore. To see the report in full screen mode please click on the arrows in the bottom right hand corner.
- Page 1 – P&L View – You can click on a particular School/College at the top and the report will provide data for only that school.
- Page 2 – Revenue, Cost and Margin by School/Department – You can right mouse click on a college/school and drill into all underlying departments.
- Page 3 – Program and Course Relationship – You can see detailed financial metrics and Student Credit Hour for every Program and Course in the institution. Clicking on the College/School menu at the top will filter the data for that particular College/School. Clicking on a Program will show all associated courses and vice-versa, clicking on a course will show all Programs that course is taken in.
- Page 4 – Program Financials per SCH – Highlights the Revenue, Expense and Margin per Student Credit Hour for each Program Major. Clicking on the College/School menu with filter the results to that particular school.
Who we have helped unearth their hidden economy
“We can actually understand the full cost of our instructional programs…we’ve never had anything close to that kind of information in the past. This is the first time we can honestly understand how much they should cost and how we should resource them. Because this university has worked on a historical budget model for many years, this is revolutionary.”
~ Cynthia R. Hale
Associate Vice President for Finance and Personnel in the Office of the Senior Vice President and Provost, University of Maryland
“Pilbara’s demonstrated higher education sector knowledge has provided CQU with a model derived from granular-level data, whilst also being timely, transparent, accurate and flexible for any future CQU or sector changes. The Pilbara team are always professional and flexible, and in constant contact as to more innovative costing approaches and sector updates.”
~ Anita Anderson
Deputy Director Corporate Budget, Central Queensland University
“Understanding what drives cost in higher education is a really fiendish challenge.”
~ Dr Gwilym Croucher
Researcher at the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne
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Pilbara Insights: The Podcast
The first dedicated audio series to support higher education leaders in their academic resource management decisions. The series will showcase the industries most respected and experienced experts, explore the topics of Program Review and Optimization, Course Evaluation, Faculty Effort, Departmental Research, Planning and Budgeting and the key benefits of Activity-Based Cost Modelling for evidence-based decision making.
Technology powered by Microsoft, Dell, and Pilbara
