Case Study: University of Nottingham achieves student planning and income modelling in minutes (vs hours) with Alteryx

University of Nottingham - Customer Case Study

The University of Nottingham, a top UK research university with about 45,000 students across multiple campuses, needed a more dynamic way to forecast student numbers and the related income that funds departmental budgets. The planning team had to process millions of records and provide five‑year, department‑level granularity across 15 income streams and many student types, but legacy tools and a costly data warehouse made querying, preparation and timely reporting difficult.

Using Alteryx the team rebuilt a 10‑year student dataset and developed a full student‑planning and income model without heavy coding—producing a proof of concept in two weeks and a complete system in two months. All forecasting now runs in Alteryx with outputs validated in Tableau and submitted to HESA; models that once took 4–5 hours now run in 9–10 minutes, with full historical storage, simultaneous iterations, version control and faster, more accurate reporting across departments.

University of Nottingham

Neil Davidson

Head of Student Reporting and Analytics