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Benchmarking & Evaluation
Any organisation – whether commercial or not for profit – needs to take regular soundings of its stakeholders, its audiences, or its customers to determine how well it is performing. Reputation is based on external assessment, and every organisation needs to know how it stands with the wider world if it is to well in the future or outperform competitors.
Most knowledge providers are required by funding agencies or quality control groups to evaluate and benchmark their work. Moreover, the opening up of international markets makes it imperative that an institution knows and understands its activities in relation to other marketplaces. To retain staff, to navigate international marketplaces, to attract the best students, to perform in research assessments, to raise endowment. For any of these daily activities, an institution must know how it is rated and valued in relation to others.
The Knowledge Partnership has strong experience in benchmarking and evaluation and we offer the following services:
- MaXimizE international benchmarking evaluation
- Evaluation of marketing and communications activity
- Evaluation of Development Projects (requiring feedback to funding agencies)
- Evaluation of student, stakeholder and client affinity and satisfaction
- Job evaluation and benchmarking of roles, salaries, etc
MaXimizE
MaXimizE is a proven method of evaluating your organisation against a battery of best practice indicators that asses your market orientation. Uniquely, you can then benchmark also against similar organisations. Our vision is to enable clients to then locate the very best practice across all the markets in which The Knowledge Partnership operates.
The development of MaXimizE was led by David Roberts, Founding Partner of the Knowledge Partnership and supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. www.maximize.ac.uk will provide more details for those in the higher education sectors.
Twenty seven HE institutions in the UK have used this system to create a baseline for organisational development and strategy.
We have a number of professionals who can act as assessors or can work as a team, each focussing on a part of your organisation where they have special experience.
Choose from
- Knowledge Partnership Directors
- Associates from the TKP Network including current and former Directors of marketing, school principals or even current directors, pro vice chancellors, student service managers and CEOs – obviously from non-competitive organisations!
In 2004 The Knowledge Partnership has worked with a number of organisations to develop market-specific variants of MaXimizE in Australia and New Zealand. We are grateful to the following for supporting the development and pilot work:
- Central Queensland University: Australian HE Version
- MIT (Manakau Institute of Technology): New Zealand T&HE version
- Association of Independent Schools in Queensland
- Anglican Church Grammar School
- St Aidans
- Canterbury College
- John Paul College
Creating New Tools and Approaches
In 2005 The Knowledge Partnership plans to develop further variants of MaXimizE and thereby enlarge the circle of best practice with FE colleges (in UK and Australia), charities, professional companies and membership organisations.
Please contact us if your organisation would be interested in taking part in development activity (there will be a cost but you will be positioned as an innovating organisation). You must have talked to you CEO first.
Marketing and Communications Evaluation
Evaluation of your marketing and communications tactical activities is essential if you are to ensure they are effective and remain value-for-money. Such evaluation can support budget allocation for development and competitor analysis.
The Knowledge Partnership has experience and expertise in evaluating the effectiveness of the following types of activity:
- Outreach and widening participation
- Media relations and crisis management plans
- Student recruitment materials
- Web sites
- Relationship marketing including open days, enquiry handling and admissions/conversion processes
- Student induction and orientation
- Staff recruitment and induction
- Internal communications
- Alumni relations
We can employ a number of methods:
- Professional evaluation using internal investigations
- External benchmarking – comparing your practice with that across knowledge sectors
- Mystery shopping (ideal for events, enquiry handling, etc and for comparing your service with that of competitors)
Independent Evaluation for Third Parties
If you have received funding for pilot or development activity and the funding agency requires some form of independent evaluation we can provide that service. You may wish to talk to us when you are preparing your bid and nominate us as your preferred evaluation partner at that stage. Our international credentials and experience may be seen by the agency as adding value to you bid.
User Evaluation and Satisfaction Surveys
- University and Tertiary Sectors – student, alumni employer and clients
- Schools – pupils, parents and alumni
- Charities – volunteers, users, donors and stakeholders
- Membership organisations - members
Gaining feedback on both the quality of your services and the critical factors that drive satisfaction amongst your various client or user groups is essential for any learning organisation. Such feedback should feed into your planning process.
In professional and intangible services word-of-mouth is critical. If you want strong levels of referral you need to be responsive and be seen to be listening. Such evaluation helps to you measure affinity and supports reputation management.
The Knowledge Partnership has within its network world leaders in this field. We can help in a number of ways ranging from advice on how to create a robust feedback programme through to producing the first set of research instruments and tools for you to implement, through to project management including design, piloting, qualitative and quantitative research, analysis and reporting or any point between.
We can add real value to the final reports because we will advise you on how to act on the results most effectively. We also help to communicate and disseminate the results to internal audiences and even through the media if the outcomes are newsworthy.
Creating New Tools and Approaches for Education to Business markets
The Knowledge Partnership is currently preparing a proposal for the development of a robust system for evaluating the satisfaction of clients of various higher education "business services". These include consultancy, contract research, etc. We shall be working with a small development set of universities and university-level institutions to create:
- A better understanding of where clients see value being created in such activities
- What clients view as the critical success processes/factors
- Reliable/effective methods and tools for gaining client feedback
- Reporting and benchmarking opportunities
The value of such feedback is obvious. Government agencies are keen for education institutions to develop knowledge-transfer activities. Those that can demonstrate satisfaction amongst there clients can use this positively in the market and in bids for development funding. Feedback will aid management in focussing on what really matters and creates perceived value. Good feedback is a great basis for boosting morale amongst staff.
Creating New Tools and Approaches for schools
We aim to develop a simple but effective package for schools so they can evaluate both student and parent feedback. We see this developing into a benchmarking club where schools can place their results into the context of a larger peer group.
If you are interested in joining please seek the support of your head or principal and then email Stephen.holmes@theknowledgepartnership.com
Periodic Departmental Evaluation
It is now widespread practice for marketing and communications departments to be externally evaluated as part of value-for-money or internal audit or quality reviews.
Given our expertise in using methods such as MaXimizE, and the research that our Directors have published in this field, The Knowledge Partnership is well placed to provide this type of review.
The scope is always in the hands of the client but we are able to offer the following components:
- Budget benchmarking
- Degree of Internal integration
- How well Internal capacity meets the needs of the remit/gaps
- Job evaluation
- Benchmarking of roles, salaries, structure and reporting lines
- Management of external suppliers
- Effectiveness of appraisal and staff development
- Review of policies and plans
Creating New Tools and Approaches for Marketing Strategy
We have plans to develop a number of specific tools that will support strategy development for knowledge organisations. These fall into three areas:
- A method for evaluating and monitoring reputation
- A model for universities and colleges to evaluate their course/subject portfolio
- Competitor and market analysis products (initially for UK higher education only)
- Software specifically to support market planning – guaranteed NOT to include inappropriate product marketing techniques and related jargon. We know there is a great demand for this but it will take to get right!
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Further Education