Amy Bryson is currently the Acting University Secretary at Western University and former Director of HBA Recruitment & Admissions Services at Ivey Business School, having also recently served as Executive Director, Office of the President and Senior Advisor to the President of Western University.
She has served as a Director on various boards, including CAA Club Group, Huron University College Executive Board and Main Street London Revitalization Organization.
At its best, what role does competitive analysis play in your school's plans?
Just to set the stage here: I was director of Recruiting and Admissions for the Honours Business Administration program at Ivey Business School when we participated in the business school study. I'm still at the University but in a different role.
So, I can speak to the point in time when we made the decision, but not the role it’s currently playing or what they are looking at doing going forward.
Back when we decided to participate in this study, it was an opportunity to have outside validation of what we were observing anecdotally.
The challenge with admissions and recruiting pieces is that we know who we identified as our competitors and we know their admissions criteria because that's public information. We also know roughly how many students they admit, but we don't necessarily have a handle on everything that happens in their pipeline compared to ours.
In terms of awareness, it’s anecdotal when we go into high schools and talk to students, guidance counselors and teachers to get a sense of what's going on in in the marketplace. Having the opportunity to get the kind of data that was coming with this study really gave us that objective outside view of how students are considering us and how our competitors are really doing, how we stack up and who our competitors are, at a much broader scale than what we would have the opportunity to figure out ourselves. Because in terms of sending out a survey, we can only really survey the students who've applied to us, but that's a limited tool, right? They've already made a decision to apply, which doesn't really give us the broader picture that CRi’s study was going to give us.
“If people are perceiving something a certain way, then as far as they're concerned it is that way. So, how do we address that?”
What other kinds of competitive scanning did your organization do, without giving away any secrets?
I can’t speak for Western as a whole but in the HBA program, we really just did our own internal scan each year. We would look at some key factors: tuition levels, admissions standards, requirements. How many students are they admitting? What's going on with their faculties?
We would do this kind of competitive scan on our main competitors – which I think is probably pretty normal for any school to do – and then we also typically engaged in a Decline survey where we send out a survey to students who didn't accept our offer. Just to get a sense of the basis for their decision, why they chose to go somewhere else, that kind of thing. It helps us figure out whether we’re losing students all to one place or to multiple places. We’re competing for top students and those students generally have a lot of options.
It's not as easy as comparing apples to apples - why a student would choose our program versus another. Each school has something a little bit different about them and our program is significantly different from most.
But we get a very low response rate on the Decline survey, which means it was done each year just to make sure that we weren't missing anything, but it could never provide us with data good enough to use to make decisions.
“It was affirming for us in the sense that we had previously identified four out of our five top competitors (as confirmed by the survey results). But also in terms of getting feedback on some other areas where there are opportunities for us in that funnel.”
Did the survey you participated in with CRI meet your expectations?
Yes. Absolutely, it did. There was good data in there, it was comprehensive. It provided us some actionable things to really look at, consider and think about.
Did you see any advantage in taking part in terms of cost advantages or terms of range of data and analysis?
I wouldn’t say it was inexpensive but I wouldn’t say it was prohibitively expensive, obviously, or I would never have gotten the permission to do it. In terms of range of data and analysis, it was definitely a positive to have participated. It was affirming for us in the sense that we had previously identified four out of our five top competitors (as confirmed by the survey results). But also in terms of getting feedback on some other areas where there are opportunities for us in that funnel.
Were there any elements that stood out for you? And if so, why?
I don't think there was anything that was overly surprising to us. Like I said before, it was affirming in the sense that where we were positioned in the marketplace was very much where we expected to be positioned, so that was helpful.
While there wasn’t anything that particularly jumped out as shocking to me about our competitors or about our own placement, it did highlight where there were opportunities for us to improve our communication in some areas because there's still some confusion or misunderstanding in the marketplace. The perception of something we do differently was maybe not what we were hoping for, but definitely something that we could take into account and work on. Because if people are perceiving something a certain way, then as far as they're concerned it is that way. So, how do we address that?
“[Institutions] need to look at their particular needs and then also weigh the benefit of having a more objective, third-party review and analysis of their market. That’s something way beyond what any one of us could do on our own, really.”
Okay, and what would you say was the biggest single takeaway for your school at the time?
I think the biggest takeaway in terms of opportunity for us was really around our web presence and our website.
Were the results received by your team and colleagues in a way that was actionable or was it more like fodder for discussion?
I think they were appreciative of the data and certainly of the view that there were things that could be actions. There was nothing we could switch on a dime and change tomorrow, it was going to have to be more of a planned project, but there was certainly willingness to look at it, for sure.
Do you have any recommendations to someone considering a competitive analysis?
They need to look at their particular needs and then also weigh the benefit of having a more objective, third-party review and analysis of their market. That’s something way beyond what any one of us could do on our own, really.
And lastly, is there anything else that you wanted to highlight?
Just what a pleasure it was working with Kirk and CRi throughout the process. My experience was very positive.