When organisations invest in projects and programmes intended to improve performance, change behaviours and ultimately benefit their organisation's impact outcomes, the investment is usually agreed in a business case and money allocated to the project or programme. However, our experience has been that in assessing costs, few organisations identify FULL costs either when forecasting or when reporting results. In our workshops and coaching, we assist clients to build up the full cost picture, using activity based cost approach. 

In the September 2011 Harvard Business Review, an article by none other that Michael Porter and Robert Kaplan titled 'How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Health Care' describes work they have carried out in the USA and Germany and includes their recommended 'time driven activity based costing approach'. This is what we have been advocating for years as the many hundreds of participants in our Awards workshops will know! It's nice to see that such eminent experts such as Porter and Kaplan support this approach!

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BT Learning Solutions in association with Tracoin, abdi's partner in the Netherlands will host abdi's 2 day ROI UK Foundation workshop in the Netherlands this week (December 8th and 9th). BT Learning Solutions has opened the workshop to participants from other organisations. For further information and to enquire about forthcoming workshop booking, email abdi or Tracoin with NL workshop in the subject line or call +441223360240 or +31186657399

Launch of new online learning and community service. First stop: NHS Yorks and the Humber  Community of Practice

abdi is delighted to announce that the first service for abdi's new online learning system (using Moodle) will be launched week commencing December 5th. The first users for this new support service will be those NHS managers that have already completed the ROI Evaluator Award and comprise the NHS Y&H ROI network group. 

The online service will support a Community of Practice (CoP) with shared experiences, resources, scheduling of work together with the online forum and live discussions. Support for this new Community of Practice has been provided by Michael Holgate, Lifelong Learning Manager at NHS Yorkshire and the Humber (pictured below). Sandeep Joshi, Product Research and Development Executive at abdi (also pictured below) has developed the new online learning system and will provide support to all users. 

Michael has been supporting NHS Education and Training leads as well as other workforce staff in the NHS to complete the ROI Foundation and Evaluator Award programmes. His commitment to ensuring disciplined planning and world class evaluation for NHS Education and Training investments has been exemplary and he continues with this new CoP to provide opportunities to ensure that all NHS investment in Education and Training delivers measurable results for patients and services users as well as the most efficient and effective results for the NHS. 

New Case studies on work supported by the British Council: Improving Education in Iraq, Supporting Change in the Bangladesh Civil Service and Skills for Social Entrepreneurs 

Three new case studies from the British Council are now available. Each of these case studies highlights the complex and extremely demanding work carried out by British Council project leaders across the globe. These cases demonstrate the importance of ensuring that these projects are comprehensively monitored and evaluated to track impact outcomes and value for money. 

Rather than waiting until after the project is completed, these project leaders have implemented disciplined monitoring systems to gather data along the way, helping to ensure that the data they gather is used to continuously improve the project's outcomes as well as learn lessons for the future. While each of the cases includes partial investment by the British Council, they were all largely funded by other institutions and involve close collaboration with other parties in planning, implementation and reporting. 

Introducing our PhD researcher

Earlier this year, abdi completed an agreement with the Open University to fund a PHD candidate. The opportunity attracted some excellent candidates and following interviews, Deneise Dadd was selected and began her PhD in October. Deneise aims to complete her PhD over the next three years and abdi will provide funding for this period. 

Deneise worked as a researcher for over a decade, mainly doing market and customer research in the financial sector. She developed an interest in managing, measuring and improving performance in services, which intensified while she completed her MSc in Service Management at the University of Buckingham. As a management consultant, she created performance measurement and improvement systems for service organizations.

Her current PhD studies, sponsored by abdi Ltd, will focus on Performance Measurement: Applying Return on Investment (ROI) in New Domains.It will be an exploratory study that will research applications of abdi's ROI methodology within three contexts: i) workforce improvement, ii) health services, and iii) international development. 

Jane Massy, abdi CEO will meet Deneise with her academic supervisors, Drs Rob Paton and Matt Hinton  at the Open University on a quarterly basis, and will provide input from experience and practice. Deneise will also provide a number of short papers for professional publications and conferences during the period of the PhD. 'It's a privilege to be working with Deneise and  I'm looking forward to seeing the results of her research in due course' commented Jane Massy, CEO abdi ltd.  

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Contact Information

phone: (+44) (0) 1223 360240
email: info@abdi.eu.com