Case Study: University of Nottingham achieves faster, more accurate student number planning with Alteryx

Student Planning Demystified with Alteryx

The University of Nottingham needed a robust Student Number Planning model to forecast enrollments, income and departmental budgets across a hugely complex landscape — 30 student types, 800 courses and 200,000 modules — where errors could cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Their legacy Cognos process was slow and inflexible, making it hard to run scenarios or keep data at the required granularity and transparency.

By rebuilding the model in Alteryx Designer (after prepping a 10-year dataset and workflows), the team gained fast scenario runs, built-in checks and defaults, and direct feeds into Tableau dashboards, all while keeping workflows well documented and modular. The result: repeatable, transparent planning that turns days of work into hours, improves accuracy for high‑stakes budget decisions, and frees analysts to focus on insight rather than manual data wrangling.

University of Nottingham

James Storey

Planning Officer