"EphMRA is recognised as running successful courses geared to developing, refining and enhancing skills, knowledge and professional competence. Our knowledge and experience, combined with the expertise of the team at Nelson Croom means that we'll be able to offer our members more flexible and available training which will enable them to really add value to their international marketing research and business intelligence activities."

Janet Henson, EphMRA

EphMRA works with Nelson Croom to provide more flexible, available and varied training for its members.

EphMRA, the European Pharmaceutical Market Research Association, brings together European, research-based pharmaceutical companies operating on a global perspective. It is the dedicated forum for strategic business intelligence and market research professionals.

EphMRA has been a leading provider of pharmaceutical training courses for more than 15 years. Since launching its full training programme in 2000, the association has continued to expand and improve its range of courses and workshops.

EphMRA approached Nelson Croom because it wanted to provide more flexible, available and varied training to its members.

The problem

EphMRA is a truly European organisation and its members live and work across the continent, making location an issue when offering face-to-face training. Members are often required to travel to Brussels, spending valuable time on travel and away from the office.

Some important courses have only been available once a year, for example an introductory course which is aimed at every new starter in the industry. EphMRA wanted to increase the availability of courses so that it could better help members to add value to their international marketing research and business intelligence activities.

EphMRA were looking for a solution that would be appropriate for all their learners, who are either new to the industry, the function or both, and for those who work in a company or an agency.

EphMRA was keen to explore online learning as it felt it may enable them to overcome these issues and provide an enhanced service to its members.

The solution

Nelson Croom was able to offer a combination of services, bringing the flexibility and accessibility of online training to EphMRA and its members.

EphMRA chose a combination of Nelson Croom's capabilities. Firstly it commissioned Nelson Croom to create two specialised programmes: Research through the Product Lifecycle and Managing a Research Project.

EphMRA provided the specialised content for each programme from courses which it already offers. The development team at Nelson Croom converted this content into engaging online programmes.

EphMRA also wanted to increase the variety of courses that it offers to its membership. They chose five courses from Nelson Croom's professional development portfolio: Negotiation Skills, Coaching Skills, Managing Workload, Leadership Skills, and Managing Within the Team, with a further five launching later in the year.

By tailoring these courses, Nelson Croom provided a much more engaging experience for the learners. EphMRA branding was used as well as references and examples relevant to the community.

Results

"EphMRA courses are designed to be as dynamic and interactive as possible. Making the move to online learning also allows us to work with issues such as location of our members, and frequency of courses. Nelson Croom has a range of solutions and has worked with us to find the best solution for our members. We're in the development stages now, and are looking forward to starting to roll the programmes out." Janet Henson, EphMRA.