Michael Gibson, data warehouse manager, planning unit at Deakin, said there is a lot of time-consuming and manual processes currently involved with getting data out of the transaction systems.

"The upgrade will greatly simplify these processes and enable executive management, in particular, to access data they didn't have before in a timely fashion," Gibson said.

"In addition, we can make better management decisions by accessing information related to university-wide planning, infrastructure, staffing, and marketing, while meeting strict government compliance regulations."

The director of education and government solutions at Cognos, Terence Atkinson, said over 1000 education institutions worldwide use Cognos including the University of Wollongong, the University of Toronto in Canada, the George Washington University in the US and the University of Ulster in Ireland.

The BI market in the Asia Pacific region is growing faster than the global average, according to a Gartner study.