Studyportals and XOLAS to partner on data analytics and benchmarking for Business Schools

Eindhoven, 25 February 2020 – STUDYPORTALS and XOLAS are starting a collaboration aimed at complementing each other’s strengths in benchmarking for business schools and data analytics for universities. The collaboration will primarily be aimed at business schools, matching institutional strength with real-time international student interest.

In this context, the services of XOLAS Strategy Solutions will be linked with those of STUDYPORTALS ACT data analytics. The purpose of the consultancy services is to translate the outcomes of substantial market analyses and benchmarking into actionable recommendations and linking those to the institutional strategy and decision making. The partnership will answer the most relevant questions and develop successful ways to enhance and promote the internationalisation of institutions, focus recruitment markets, and improve faculty and student quality. The partnership will focus on the following strategic areas relevant to business schools:

• Internationalization of institution, programmes, faculty

•  International branding and positioning

•  Student quality and quantity

Thijs van Vugt, Director of Analytics and Consulting at Studyportals noted:

‘We have access to a growing knowledge base about the actual behaviour and preferences of international students globally. Our data has already shown its predictive power and increasingly our clients, governments and professional bodies request these insights. We believe that real value is created when business schools match their institutional strengths to the interest in the marketplace. Together with XOLAS, we believe we can serve the B-school sector even better, instantly! That is why we have chosen to collaborate with XOLAS.’

Mathias Falkenstein, Founding Partner of XOLAS:

‘Business Schools and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) more generally are facing a variety of challenges with the most important ones being technology-driven disruptions in teaching & learning, rising financial pressures, heightened international competition, and changing demographics. We at XOLAS are excited to cooperate with Studyportals’ Analytics and Consulting Team to provide data-driven solutions and management tools that allow schools to respond successfully to the constantly changing and often “hard-to-meet expectations” of their institutional stakeholders. We offer our joint services because we, Studyportals and XOLAS, believe in the higher purpose of higher education and business schools in particular, as an integral part of our societies’

Press contact

Studyportals: Carmen Neghina (carmen@studyportals.com | +31 655 875 270)

XOLAS: Mathias Falkenstein (mathias.falkenstein@xol.as | +49 15 118 515 998)

Additional information

XOLAS is a specialized strategy consultancy focusing initially on business schools globally as its client base, but with the intent to ultimately broaden its reach within higher education. We combine our complementary skill sets, experiences, and professional backgrounds to develop a global network of experienced consultants from the business school industry to fill this gap and to build a prosperous business around it.

XOLAS sees itself as a vital and caring part of the business school community. We believe in the role of organizational agility and resilience as drivers of institutional success – for our clients as well as for ourselves. Continuous improvement and innovation are therefore part of our core mission and a priority when developing our business further.

The interests of our clients, business schools and universities, will always take priority.

We aim to maintain good and cooperative relations with all associations representing business schools. As a “good citizen” of the business school community, we will welcome any opportunity to involve ourselves in their activities.

STUDYPORTALS is the global study choice platform and started as a spin-off of European Students’ associations in 2007. Our mission is to empower the world to choose (for) education. We are determined to make your international higher education marketing easier and more effective. Over 36 million users annually from 240 countries worldwide look at offer over 200,000 programmes from over 3,700 universities in almost 120 countries, which allows us to help our clients with best practice from all over the world. This provides a unique dataset on real-time demand for English taught degree programmes.

Using this dataset, the ANALYTICS AND CONSULTING TEAM advises and assists universities and other institutions in the higher education sector to realise their ambitions in the field of international marketing and international student recruitment. Our team of consultants cover everything from strategy, branding and marketing to customer relationship management, student recruitment, market insight, competitor analysis, web analytics, training as well as custom services. Our three areas of expertise are Analytics & Market Insights, (Strategic) Consulting and Tracking and recruitment funnel optimisation.

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