Our story

NousCubane is a world-leading provider of benchmarking services that empower clients to identify opportunities, lead change and measure success in their organisation.

NousCubane began as Cubane in 2009 and through its flagship UniForum program, established itself as a leader in higher education benchmarking services, working with leading universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and Ireland.

After more than a decade working together, supporting shared university clients around the world to drive transformative change, Cubane joined forces with Nous to become part of Nous Group in 2021, rebranding itself as NousCubane in 2023.

Today, NousCubane supports clients across the public sector to make better strategic decisions, optimise operations and invest in their core missions.

By drawing on the consulting expertise of our colleagues at Nous, we can also guide you through complex strategy and transformation programs, so you can achieve your mission.

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OUR TIMELINE

Jonathan Blakeman (former VP, Finance and Operations UNSW) and Edward Curry- Hyde (CEO, NousCubane) felt that existing approaches to benchmarking did not lead to change. The benchmarking exercise typically concludes with the delivery of a benchmarking report, and the underlying data - collected through high-level processes – is easily challenged. Jonathan felt that proper investment in a data collection process that has strong local input was critical for delivering robust data. With robust data, the benchmarking report should then be the starting point, rather than concluding point, of the exercise. The final missing link was already well established among academics across universities: collaboration.

Collaborative discovery with other participant, founded on a common platform of robust comparative insights, offered university managers a sounder basis for driving administrative improvement than benchmarking alone. With this, managers could go well beyond simple benchmarking to discover the extent to which different choices were delivering different outcome and draw more strategic insights from their collective work. The UniForum program, a multi-year collaborative membership program, was created to develop and support this approach to benchmarking. Over 65 universities in 5 countries have joined the collaborative program since its founding in 2009.

Working closely with member universities has been a key part of ensuring UniForum develops in ways that meet the needs of the universities as they progress on their journeys to design and deliver services that best support the academic mission. NousCubane’s experience delivering the UniForum program over more than a decade, along with Nous’ broader expertise in shaping and implementing improvement programs has enabled our services to further develop and grow into the full suite of services we are proud to offer clients across the public sector today.

Some of the Universities we work with