Bursarnet Consultancy

There are four main areas where we are asked to assist:

1/ Operational Benchmarking

The Opex Benchmarking tool was designed with the help of existing member schools and launched in 2017. Its aim is to examine all areas of operational spend, other than teacher pay, and produce a set of 30 KPIs against which any given school can be compared with similar schools.

The main metrics focus on:

Energy: price paid per kWh (how well are you buying?) and usage (how efficiently are you using the energy you are buying?)
Catering: cost of food inputs per pupil, cost of running the kitchen per pupil (how much of your spend is feeding the pupils compared to running the kitchen?)
IT: how well invested are you in infrastructure, and what's the opex cost of running the IT department?
Cleaning: cost per pupil and per m2 of building.
Estates: cost of maintenance per m2 of building maintained, and cost of grounds per acre.
Curricular and extra-curricular spend per pupil (what resources are spent per pupil compared to similar schools)?
Cost of photocopiers and quantities of paper used per pupil.
Insurance: how close are your premiums to sector norms?
Telecoms & internet: cost per user.
Key departmental cost per pupil, across marketing, finance, development, and administration.

With over 160 independent schools now participating, of all types and geographies, the pool of data is significant.

The methodology also allows us to suggest potential improvements in those metrics where a school is seen to be below par, and to calculate the value to the school of making those improvements. This makes prioritisation of focus and effort that much simpler.

The Opex Benchmarking Review is normally a 1 week assignment (2-3 days to collect the data - mostly remotely, and 2-3 days of reporting writing and presentation of results).

2/ Estates Maturity Review

Often the largest area of support spend is the maintenance of the estate, and the Operational Benchmarking has demonstrated that the range of spend across schools is very considerable on a per m2 basis. Some of the higher metrics are temporary (for example a school which has taken a "maintenance holiday" for a few years and is now having to catch-up), but others are more structural. The purpose of the Estates Maturity Review is to look at how the Estates function is organised and to suggest ways in which this can be improved. Over time, with better organisation, the cost of maintenance always falls.

The main areas of focus are:

Estates strategy.
Quality of data available to the Estates team, and its stakeholders.
Control of risk and compliance.
Planning activities.
Project management and control.
Safety and security environment.
Procurement and supplier management.
Organisation and structure.
Financial management and KPIs.
Leadership and engagement.

The output of this process is a report which includes an assessment of where each function is in terms of "maturity". Is it still Unstructured/ Reactive/Proactive, or Adding Value? These findings are summarised in an easily understandable benchmark table. The report will naturally include recommendations which will help each function to progress along the maturity curve.

The Estates Maturity Review is normally a 4 day assignment (2 days to visit the estate and meet the key staff, and 2 days of report writing and presentation of results).

3/ Catering Provision Assessment

The reasons for an apparent poor performance in catering can have many causes and require specialist knowledge to identify. We have therefore partnered with ISCC to produce a tailored Catering Provision Assessment for Bursarnet clients who are interested in getting to the next level of detail.

The scope of this assessment is to review the following key functional areas which are sufficient to identify where improvements can be made:

Adequacy of food allowances (menu planning).
Review of non-core food costs (match teas, common rooms, hospitality).
Purchase prices achieved (food and non-food).
Manning levels & productivity.
Sundry purchases (e.g. chemicals, disposables, deep cleans).
Benchmarking of management fees (if outsourced operation).
Benchmarking of purchasing rebates (if outsourced).

This assessment normally requires 1 day on site (and can include interviews with key stakeholders), 2 days' remote report writing and final presentation of results.

4/ IT Provision Assessment

If a school is seen to have a high KPI for IT spend per pupil, or if the bursar is on the receiving-end of complaints from the staff about the IT provision, the next step is to carry out a review of the IT operation. We have teamed up with Commercial IT Services to produce an "IT Provision Assessment".

Ultimately, problems in IT can be narrowed down to 3 areas: people, process, and technology.

The objective of this assessment is to cover the following key subjects, which are sufficient to form an opinion on the current effectiveness of the school's IT function, together with a roadmap for suggested improvements.

Effectiveness of current IT strategy.
Core IT infrastructure.
Production servers/ storage/ networking.
Classroom technology.
IT governance.
IT security.
High availability, business continuity and disaster recovery.