British Council: Auditing Global Compliance

"We started using Confirmit as a feedback tool and now use it to replace internal processes. We've run 1713 studies over the last two years, with an ROI of over 1700%. People now understand the power ... it's really captured the imagination."
- Confirmit Application Manager, British Council

Executive Summary

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UK's international organization for educational opportunities and cultural relations, with 239 offices in 110 countries and territories.

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Needs to ensure that 7,500 employees demonstrate knowledge of Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts.

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Integrated Confirmit with educational CD to test employee compliance.

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Results delivered instantly.

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Confirmit used for 1700 surveys across enterprise.

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Programme ROI of over 1700%.

The British Council represents British culture throughout the world. With 7500 employees in 110 countries and territories, it provides educational opportunities and cultural relations globally. With 80 languages spoken across the organisation, the British Council has a unique challenge in deploying policy internally and communicating externally in a consistent fashion.

The company has a well defined requirement to interact with customers and staff. "External-facing interactivity is about engaging feedback," said Lloyd Irving, Confirmit Application Manager. "It is about engaging a customer about a service or a product. Internally it is about replacing processes that are done manually."

One key manual process that the organisation sought to automate involved ensuring that all employees globally demonstrate knowledge of the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts, as required for government compliance.

"The objective is first to test every single member of staff, every year to see if they understand the rules," said Irving. "We've got quite a small department and we need automated techniques in order to be able to achieve this."

Integrate Confirmit with educational CD-ROM
The decision was taken to integrate Confirmit, blending a question and answer session, with an educational CD-ROM. The CD-ROM, distributed to all employees, consists of a series of training materials that everybody is required to read. Once they've read and understood it, they work on a questionnaire that tests that understanding.

The questionnaire randomly presents the participant with 10 out of 41 available questions. As they answer the questions, they are scored as to their proficiency. Confirmit then immediately reports the score. In the event that they do not score well enough to pass, Confirmit prompts them for a retest. After 4 failures the system prompts them to take a course. There is also the facility to notify management as to the success or failure.

Irving commented that the reporting facility is a key reason that the British Council chose Confirmit. "It is very powerful to report in simple ways with the frequency analysis of questions, or cross-tabulations, or pivot tables… [It] is very open and very manageable by people without any significant knowledge of IT."
Piloted in the UK, the results were such that British Council has now rolled out the program to its China, Singapore and Korea offices, finding it a very cost-effective way to centrally manage this government requirement.

The results were so strong that the organisation made Confirmit itself available to offices throughout the organisation. In fact, the British Council has run over 1700 projects with Confirmit over the last two years, delivering an ROI of over 1700% relative to the cost of outsourcing this work to an agency.

The complexity of the organisation, from its centralised focus to the requirements of the individual country organisations was simplified with Confirmit. "The Confirmit system allows us to keep libraries of style and questions," said Irving. "We can deploy similar surveys covering similar topics - our web sites, for example - with minimal extra effort on our part. That means that we get to spend our time analysing the results, not reinventing the wheel all of the time."

Irving concludes, "1700 internal projects tell the story! The demand is absolutely huge - people are dreaming up new applications for it without us having to push the technology out. It's so cost effective that we've been able to run 3 times as many studies as we'd budgeted. It is one of the most exciting things that have happened to our online services in the last couple of years."

British Council: Auditing Global Compliance

"We started using Confirmit as a feedback tool and now use it to replace internal processes. We've run 1713 studies over the last two years, with an ROI of over 1700%. People now understand the power ... it's really captured the imagination."
- Confirmit Application Manager, British Council

Technology Audit of Confirmit

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British Council: Auditing Global Compliance

"We started using Confirmit as a feedback tool and now use it to replace internal processes. We've run 1713 studies over the last two years, with an ROI of over 1700%. People now understand the power ... it's really captured the imagination." - Confirmit Application Manager, British Council

Technology Audit of Confirmit

Confirmit News

Learn More

"We started using Confirmit as a feedback tool and now use it to replace internal processes. We've run 1713 studies over the last two years, with an ROI of over 1700%. People now understand the power ... it's really captured the imagination."
- Confirmit Application Manager, British Council