Measuring Impact

The client delivers Knowledge Transfer (KT) activities on behalf of the National Measurement Office (part of the UK Government’s Department of Business Innovation and Skills). We were asked to evaluate the impact of existing KT activities and make recommendations for improvement.

Case Study – Knowledge Transfer Evaluation

At the outset, we undertook a period of intensive research to establish the current level of activity and stakeholder involvement so that we could help the client make best use of the evaluation budget.

Having mapped activities, stakeholders and impact measures, we then collected data from a number of sources including face-to-face interviews, electronic survey and telemarketing. This was analysed, combined with global best practice, and used to develop a prioritised and costed set of recommendations.

The project was extended to allow rapid deployment of some ‘quick win’ projects. For one of these, the client’s representative said “We used to spend £60k producing passive newsletters. We now spend £15k interacting directly with over 800 people and estimate the increase in impact to be 10 fold.”

Evidence Based Decision Making

The benefits our client gained from this project were:

	The ability to make meaningful management decisions using an accurate evidence base about the level of awareness and uptake of KT activities.
	Increased interaction with KT stakeholders and recipients, further enhancing the impact of all KT activities but also opening new communication channels.
	Implementation of new active KT activities in place of old passive ones, resulting in cost savings, greater coverage and increased impact.

Increased Impact

The client was able to improve the outreach and impact of their KT activities by a factor of 2, and identify further improvements which will be implemented over the next 3 - 5 years.