Strategic Advantage to launch in England on Nov. 13
Update: See the event schedule here.
Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI) is pleased to announce the first international launch of its Strategic Advantage economic analysis suite at The Institute of Directors in London on November 13th. The web-based software, which has some 2,000 users at more than 400 organizations in the United States, is currently being customised to display and analyse data for England’s counties and unitary authorities. The launch event will include a product demonstration and seminar (download the invitation or book now with Protocol National).
“We are very pleased to be able to bring practical, user-friendly economic and labour market research tools to the UK,” said EMSI CEO Andrew Crapuchettes. “We are doing some really ground-breaking work in making this kind of information accessible and usable for public and private sector organisations alike.”
Strategic Advantage will launch initially with two core modules.
- The “Economic Impact” module allows researchers to build customised “input-output” models of regional economies. These allow simulations of how many jobs in an area might be gained or lost due to the “ripple effects” of hypothetical changes in one or more industries. Whereas in the past such models have had to be constructed on a region-by-region basis and were available from only one or two firms, EMSI allows anyone to build a model for a custom-defined region in minutes over the Internet, and individuals can instantly use the model to run impact simulations.
- The “Economic Forecaster” includes past data and projections for an area’s industries, workforce, and population demographics.
EMSI plans to follow up in early 2009 with additional modules that would help connect labour market trends to colleges’ workforce-oriented programs as well as to occupational knowledge and skills.
The key advantages of EMSI’s tools that have made them so popular in the United States include
- Integration of multiple government statistical databases into a single source,
- Value-added estimation and extrapolation for gaps in published data,
- Built-in analysis and reports that help make sense of data and are displayed instantly over the web, and
- The ability to perform custom aggregations/groupings of geographic areas and data types.
US community and technical colleges in particular, equivalents of the UK’s further education or FE colleges, have flocked to EMSI for the information they need to anticipate and meet the demand for a more skilled and educated workforce.
“In the US, these colleges are taking on a central role in agile, demand-driven workforce development, which is critical for national competitiveness,” states Crapuchettes. “We help them carry out that mission.”
EMSI, which has already carried out socioeconomic impact studies for dozens of FE colleges, expects them to be in the first line of customers for Strategic Advantage as well. EMSI sees the college impact study and Strategic Advantage tool are complementary: the former informs the public about a college’s role in building regional prosperity while the latter helps the college optimize that role by aligning itself with regional workforce demand. To address these issues Ioan Morgan, principal of Warwickshire College, will be a main speaker at the November 13th launch event.
EMSI anticipates that many types of organizations and companies, not just the FE sector, could benefit from the information available in Strategic Advantage. “In the US, many public and private organizations are beginning to see the advantage of getting all their economic and labour market data from a single source,” says Crapuchettes.
Further details on the UK version of Strategic Advantage (still under development):
- Initially data will be available for England only, with the entire UK expected to follow next year.
- Industry, occupation, and population data will be available for NUTS 3 areas (generally counties and unitary authorities, with some exceptions) and custom groupings of these areas.
- Industry analysis and input-output models will include detail on over 200 industries.
For more information about EMSI and Strategic Advantage, please contact Mike Church at EMSI (+1 866 999 3674, US Pacific Daylight Time). For information on the launch event and booking, please contact Lauren Gage at Protocol National (0115 911 1227).
