2011 proved a challenging year for Learning and Development’s open course programme, with fat results against the previous year. The faltering economy has impacted performance with open course, soft skills training considered to be discretionary spend in uncertain times. This performance is in line with the market place. Nevertheless, on a positive note we were ahead of 2010 in numbers of attendees hence delivering training to more people.
As a complement to the open course programme we were able to offset its weakness through the acquisition of the SIA Group which focuses on in-company, tailored programmes delivered throughout the world. The integration of SIA Group into the Institution’s Learning and Development unit has been very successful in all areas from the transition of the brand to the development of new business opportunities.
One Birdcage Walk continued to feel the impact of the economic downturn combined with the difficulties of a client base dominated by the public sector. However, through strong marketing it had considerable success in attracting new clients with 54% of its revenues from new business; also, both enquiries and site inspections were 12% higher than in 2010.
In only its second year of existence, the Commercial Services made further progress. In effect, it delivered two-fold benefits: new revenues for the Institution, but perhaps more importantly a valuable service for members which saved
them time and money. The Purple Legal free telephone helpline and the Wexas travel services club have proved particularly successful. It is pleasing that IMechE is now aligned with other professional engineering institutions and large professional bodies that support their members with such services.
The decision to outsource PE magazine and topengineeringjobs.com to the media specialists Caspian Media has proved very successful with a high satisfaction rate from members in a recent reader survey and the achievement of 2011 Best Membership Magazine in the APA awards. Along with this positive response we have also achieved our objective of financial stability with predetermined costs and ‘no surprises’.
Equally the decision to sell the journals unit to Sage Publications has also proved to be successful with penetration into new markets that previously we had attempted to reach with little success such as Germany, Turkey and UAE. Crucially, we have high satisfaction rates from the editorial boards and authors.
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