XOLAS Advisory Services

The XOLAS advisory offer is based on a three-pillar approach:

1. We provide business school clients with an external market perspective of the issue at hand supported by proprietary data analytics and benchmarking,
2. we help our clients to identify sustainable strategic responses and to subsequently design the implementation process,
3. we facilitate and support our clients’ organizational restructuring efforts to achieve revised strategic ambitions and performance targets.

New: Learn about our Degree Program Portfolio Strategy

XOLAS Knowledge Solutions

Knowledge solutions strengthen advisory competencies of XOLAS as well as its visibility in the business school and university community. We organize workshops, produce occasional white papers, and publish books and articles in practitioner media and newspapers. We broadly engage in a dialogue with the business school community by disseminating knowledge outcomes via social media, conferences, webinars and any other means available to us. We partner with other organizations of high repute with a shared topical interest.

New: Learn about our Teaching Innovation Workshop Series

XOLAS Intelligence Solutions

Our emerging portfolio of business intelligence tools is a key driver of XOLAS advisory. It enables clients to adopt a business-analytic approach to quality improvement and enhances their credibility when seeking market recognition. We pursue tool development synergistically with XOLAS knowledge solutions with current focus areas being performance controlling, competitive benchmarking, and impact measurement.

New: Learn about StrategyMetrics

XOLAS Training Solutions

XOLAS training solutions are built around developmental challenges facing higher education institutions and aim to enhance the organizational agility of our clients. Target groups can be executives occupying specific functional roles or project teams tasked with strategy implementation. Training solutions linked to advisory take on the form of coaching.

New: Learn about our Teaching Innovation Workshop Series

XOLAS Financial Advisory

Restructuring requires access to additional funding and possibly a change of ownership. XOLAS accepts sell-side as well as buy-side mandates to connect business schools and universities with financial and strategic investors. It can also provide interim management coverage and can facilitate turn-around management and workout processes.

Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future.

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) and XOLAS have concluded a partnership to guide business schools in meeting their challenges for continuous strategic and organizational improvement. Under the partnership, XOLAS integrates RSM’s StrategyMetrics® benchmarking analysis tool into its services, allowing business schools around the world to develop customized services, using rankings and public data, to clarify their strengths and weaknesses as well as their competitive positioning trajectory.

StrategyMetrics®, together with consulting services provided by XOLAS, allows business schools to take an evidence-based approach to gain a more nuanced understanding of their comparative performance relative to peer institutions on a national and international level as well as in comparison to business schools reflecting their medium- to longer-term strategic ambitions. Using an open-science approach, the RSM/XOLAS service will build customized analytics services that will allow schools to arrive at a more accurate assessment of how change management processes can improve institutional, program, faculty, research and/or student development.

Access the original press release here.

Arlanto GmbH is a provider of software and advanced data analytics that enable higher education institutions to rationalize the management of impact and risk. It collaborates with XOLAS in the marketing of its risk management solution, EDURISK.

EDURISK is based on the risk register methodology which is state-of-the-art in the corporate and higher education sectors. It is a proven product that has been derived from Arlanto’s operational risk solution currently deployed in a leading global bank and other financial institutions. For further information, click here.

XOLAS is a software partner of Arlanto. Both companies collaborate in the marketing and client-customization of EDURISK. In addition, XOLAS offers strategic and operational consultancy to support EDURISK clients to professionalize their risk management practices.

The Global Business School Network (GBSN) is a nonprofit organization that partners with business schools, industry, foundations and aid agencies to improve access to quality, locally relevant management education for the developing world. Within the context of the emerging economies mission, GBSN builds activities, programs and projects that enable the creation of new knowledge, provide meaningful international experiences, and build relationships that can transform management education, as well as provide broad visibility to our member schools as a champion and change maker for economic and social development.

GBSN organizes international events and capacity building programs engage our network members to advise, train and mentor regional educators. And through publication, partnership and speaking opportunities, it advocates for the importance of management education in economic and social development efforts. GBSN’s vision reinforces the central role of business schools to its mission. Efforts to connect them to business, government, and non-profit organizations is viewed as a critical enabler, one that accelerates innovation, augments capabilities, and amplifies impact.

XOLAS collaborates with GBSN on various initiatives that are designed to channel students, scholars, and leaders at business schools into our communities to do work and catalyze innovations that make a difference.

XOLAS has entered into a strategic partnership with Studyportals that involves the cooperation in the areas of data analytics and benchmarking for business schools and universities, which will help these institutions to cope with sector dynamics and to thrive from disruption.

By combining our complementary skill sets, experiences, and respective networks in higher education, XOLAS and the Analytics & Consulting Team of Studyportals have developed a global network of experienced consultants as well as benchmarking tools and dashboards to advise business schools and universities. The partnership will offer strategic support to clients in terms of data-analytic benchmarking which will help them to match their institutional strengths with real-time student interest in international recruitment.

Both partners together provide consultancy services by transforming outcomes of detailed market analyses and into actionable items and linking them to a client’s institutional strategy and decision making.

We at XOLAS consider the collaboration with Studyportals a cornerstone in our strategy to become one of the leading consultancies in the higher education informed by high-end data analytics.

XOLAS is proud member of the world’s largest business education alliance, AACSB International. The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) connects educators, students, and businesses to achieve a common goal: to create the next generation of business leaders. Synonymous with the highest standards of excellence since 1916, AACSB International provides quality assurance, business education intelligence, and professional development services to over 1,500 member organizations and more than 785 accredited business schools worldwide.

XOLAS and AACSB International cooperate in the design and delivery of a series of online courses for professional staff at business schools.

Quality Education Development Ltd (QED) has worked with international business schools across six continents since 1998, assisting them to gain and maintain their international accreditations (AACSB, EQUIS, AMBA and EFMD Accredited). 

QED acts as an independent advisor, with significant experience of guiding international business schools through accreditation processes. Services include assisting with strategic advice for deans and executive teams, providing day-to-day project management, drafting and editing accreditation documentation, facilitating workshops for faculty, students and others to move the process forward, and 121 expert advice, online support and more for accreditation review processes. QED is the exclusive agent for the ™Accredinator, a software application that supports business schools with their accreditation data requirements.

As alliance partners, XOLAS and QED will jointly engage in client acquisition and management, to realize the synergies from combining the service portfolios of both partners for the benefit of clients, and the exploration of new market segments with innovative service offers.

Insendi, a Study Group Company, is an innovation-led, learning experience platform, designed to enable business schools and universities to deliver premium online and blended courses.

It offers a broad range of pedagogical tools and functionalities which allow educators to craft engaging and effective ‘human centred’ learning experiences via an intuitive, uncluttered interface. With learning pedagogy at its heart, the platform blends taught, experiential and social elements for optimum learner progression.

Originally created for online MBA courses at Imperial College Business School London, an increasing number of global business schools and higher education institutions now partner with insendi for the provision of their higher and executive education programmes. Our partners include University of Oxford, HEC Paris, Johns Hopkins University and University of Melbourne.

We would be delighted to show you around the platform – please contact us for a demo at: www.insendi.com/request-a-demo

XOLAS has entered into a strategic alliance with Hangzhou WeLearn Education Technology Co. LTD (WeLearn) to jointly engage in the launching of advisory and training solutions for the Chinese as well as the wider Asian market. WeLearn’s vision is to become a leading, renowned, and influential social service platform in the Yangtze River Delta, China, and an incubator for scholars and students who wish to start a business. Together with Zhejiang University International Business School, WeLearn will take full advantage of the strategic opportunities presented by the development of Yangtze River Delta to implement the multi-institution, multi-discipline and multi-level partnership strategy, leveraging the legacy of excellence of Zhejiang University.

Hardcastle & Associates provides specialist professional services support, insight and advice. It shares experience through consultancy and reports to enable their clients to connect and achieve deeper stakeholder engagement. From marketing and reputation building, recruitment and admissions to careers, alumni and corporate relations, they work with clients to deliver effective solutions for impact enhancement. They are authors of a series of Sharing the Experience reports and articles including Business School Advisory Boards – Maximizing the Opportunity and The MBA and the Value of Practitioner Engagement.