The Irish Management Institute has improved its position among internationally ranked providers of Customised Executive Education in this year’s Financial Times (FT) Executive Education Rankings.
Published today, (Monday, May 9th) the rankings show that IMI remains the only Irish business school to be ranked for the provision of Customised Executive Education. This confirms, for the third year in succession, IMI’s place among the top 60 global providers of uniquely tailored, company specific executive education.
“This is a significant achievement for IMI especially in a year when organisations are still very nervous about investing in staff development,” commented Justin Kinnear, Head of Customised Executive Education at the IMI.
IMI has climbed significantly in certain areas of provision measured by the FT Rankings. Of particular importance is the area of follow-up with clients, where IMI has climbed 20 places above competing business schools over the past three years (up 15 places on 2010).
“One of the things we particularly paid attention to in the last two years is to sit down with companies to really understand, in a hard commercial sense, what it is they want to get out of their training. We then focus relentlessly on delivering that. So when you talk to companies about their experience, as the FT Ranking process does, and ask them about the value they received, they talk about how IMI’s input made a real impact on their processes, their people, their bottom line,” continued Kinnear.
Similarly, IMI has risen 20 places in the rankings in relation to its provision of overseas programmes and 16 places on its 2010 ranking in relation to international participants on its programmes.
Clients’ readiness to work with the IMI on similar projects in the future has helped IMI climb 9 places above its competitors since first appearing in the FT Rankings. In terms of value for money, IMI has improved its ranking by 7 places since 2009.
Speaking in relation to value for money Kinnear noted: “We understand the commercial realities and the pressures on organisations. The biggest benefit of customised executive education is that we can concentrate on those elements that customers value most and take out those they don’t.”
The Financial Times survey ranks executive programmes across a range of factors including programme design, teaching faculty, new skills & learning, follow up, international participation and value for money.
This year IMI is ranked just three places behind MIT Sloan. The top ranked schools include Duke, HEC Paris and Harvard Business School.
“What is encouraging about this year’s rankings is that we have consolidated our position and moved in the right direction, up the rankings. We continue to focus on what really matters for the clients and they have endorsed what we do through this ranking,” commented Dr Tom McCarthy, Chief Executive of IMI.
IMI Customised Executive Education involves a close collaboration with clients to design pragmatic solutions to their specific business issues.
IMI works to fully understand the challenges clients are facing and programmes are then designed to align completely with the client’s business strategy and in order to drive optimal business results. These rankings are produced after a lengthy and rigorous process of evaluation among the companies involved and benchmarking against those other business schools assessed.
