Institutional research supports collection of evidence, data, and information to conduct analyses for decision making, planning and continuous improvement in educational institutes. Conceptually, it covers wide range of areas such as admissions, student services, career outcomes, and facilities. It seems to become covering wider areas including emerging areas such as sustainability. As in today's social infrastructure, software plays an important role also in institutional domain. Software seems to keep growing in its scope, size and complexity also in institutional research domain. However, many organizations have not invested in the capabilities necessary to effectively manage life-cycle process for such products and services. We argue that software engineering techniques, such as life-cycle process model and software product line engineering are important in developing systems effective in institutional research. In this paper, we discuss a trial case of requirements development in improving the energy management system in our campus, as an emerging area of institutional research, by using software engineering techniques under the goal of increasing the awareness and involvement of members for smart energy management.