A University Leadership Dashboard with Live Figures

What leaders are missing today

A vice-chancellor needs to know how the university is doing. Are fees coming in? Are exams on track? Which strategic goals are slipping? Which risks are growing? Which actions from Council are still open?

In most universities, the answers come from separate reports, each built by hand by a different office. They arrive at different times and use different definitions. By the time they reach the leadership team, they are already old.

Leaders also face a stream of approvals by email, each with its own attachments. It is easy to miss one. It is hard to see what is waiting.

Compass is the leadership product in Oxonia Lead. It is new, and it draws on every other Oxonia product the university uses.

Live figures from every product

The Compass dashboard shows live figures from the rest of the platform. Fee collection and payment plans come from Advance. Results and marking progress come from Mark. Research bids and outputs come from Research. Governance actions come from Senate.

Each figure links back to its source. A leader who sees a number can click through to the records behind it. That builds trust. It also stops arguments about whose spreadsheet is right.

What appears depends on what the university buys. A university with only Lead and Teach sees governance and teaching figures. One with Oxonia Complete sees the whole picture.

Figures are shown to each leader according to their role. A dean sees their faculty in detail. The VC sees the whole university.

Strategic plan with RAG status

Compass holds the strategic plan. Each goal has targets and a named owner. Owners update progress, and Compass shows red, amber or green status for each target. Where possible, progress comes straight from live figures rather than from a manual update.

The leadership team can see at a glance which goals are on track and which need attention. Council can see the same view, at the level of detail it needs.

• Goals, targets and named owners
• Red, amber, green status for every target
• Progress linked to live figures where possible
• Views for the leadership team and for Council

Owners are reminded when an update is due. If a target has had no update for a while, Compass shows that too, so stale information does not look like good news. Leaders can open any target to see its history, its owner's comments and the figures behind it.

Risk register and overdue actions

Compass keeps the institutional risk register. Each risk has an owner, a likelihood, an impact and controls. A heat map shows where the biggest risks sit. Owners review their risks on a set schedule, and Compass reminds them.

Overdue actions are shown by faculty. These are the actions agreed at Council, Senate and committees, chased by Action Chaser. Leaders see which faculties are keeping up and which are falling behind.

Together, the risk register and the action list give the leadership team a clear view of what could go wrong and what has not yet been done.

The heat map is useful in Council and audit committee meetings. Members can see how risks have moved since the last meeting, which controls have changed and which risks need a decision from them. Every change in score is recorded with a reason and a name.

One approvals inbox

Compass gives each leader one approvals inbox. Requests from across the platform arrive there: leave and purchases from Office, grant bids from Research, policy changes and more. Each request shows what is being asked, the supporting papers and who has already approved it.

Leaders approve, return or reject with a comment. The decision is recorded and the requester is told. Delegations set in Office apply, so a deputy can act when a leader is away.

The inbox shows how long each request has waited. Leaders can sort by urgency or by type, and the person waiting can see where their request sits. That removes a common cause of frustration for staff, who often do not know whether a request was even seen.

The weekly executive brief

Each week, Compass prepares an Ai enabled executive brief. It summarises what changed: figures that moved, targets that changed status, new risks, overdue actions and approvals waiting. Every point in the brief cites its source record.

The brief is written for a busy reader. A leader can read it in a few minutes and know where to look. It is a summary, not a decision. Leaders still read the detail before acting.

The brief also helps prepare for leadership team meetings. The agenda can start from what the brief flagged.

Leaders can set what the brief covers. A DVC for education may want more on teaching and results. A Bursar may want more on fees and payment plans. Each leader gets a brief shaped to their role, drawn from the same records.

Price and getting started

Compass costs £15,000 a year for up to 5,000 students, £22,000 for 5,000 to 15,000 and £30,000 for 15,000 to 40,000. Compass is part of Oxonia Lead and adds most value when other products feed it.

Read about the Lead suite, or see pricing for Oxonia Complete, which includes every product at 30% off.

A good way to start is to set up the strategic plan and the risk register in Compass first, because they need no other product. Live figures then grow as each other product goes live. Leaders see value early, and the dashboard gets richer over the first year.

Products in this article

Questions people ask