Tender documents obtained by the Otago Daily Times showed the university was seeking applications for a new system.
"The university presently uses an Excel model to produce the long-term strategic forecast," the documents said.
"This model, and the associated processes to maintain it, have grown in complexity over time and are dependent on the knowledge of a few key people to maintain them.
"Student forecasting is similarly dependent on very limited resource with knowledge of the logic and workings of their current tools, which involves Excel and the use of custom R script."
The documents said an ideal solution to this problem would "allow for integrated long-term forecasting of our student numbers and financials" and "support an increase in the University of Otago’s forecasting and planning capabilities, therefore enabling an improved responsiveness to financial challenges and decisions about resource allocation".
It comes at a time when the university has overestimated the number of students enrolling.
The university has also been under the financial microscope and is looking to make "permanent and lasting savings" through a series of departmental restructures and voluntary redundancies processes.
"We don’t want custom software development or an overly complex solution that requires extensive customisation or development that goes beyond the configuration of an existing product," the documents said.
"We are looking for an off-the-shelf product that meets our needs once sufficiently configured."
A document obtained by the ODT showed the present forecasting models for student numbers involved dozens of steps and inputs.
"We are looking for the best value for money over the whole of life of the solution.
"While cost is important, we are equally interested in the quality, reliability and compliance of the proposed solution."
New Zealand Initiative economist Dr Eric Crampton said having a good forecast of student numbers would be incredibly important for university financial planning.
"Central government would apply penalties for undershooting projected equivalent full-time students [EFTS]; they’d also fail to receive expected tuition income.
"Being able to forecast trends across different colleges and departments would also be important for staffing. If one department has a vacancy and another department has high EFTS ratios, do you hire in one, both, or neither?"
Dr Crampton said the Covid-19 period broke "all the normal ways of forecasting international student numbers" and "potentially some of the domestic ones as well".
"So it’s not at all crazy that Otago would be wanting a better forecasting model if the more rough-and-ready version that they have been running had started really breaking down."
Applications for the tender close on September 20.
