MQ insight has been developed in line with the company’s declared strategy of being a ‘disrupter’ in the market by providing analytical tools that will provide its customers with hard, specific information that will help them benchmark and optimise their mobility programmes. 

The company said that MQ Insight goes beyond policy benchmarking or broad organisational assumptions. It combines a proven methodology, best practices, research and expertise to give senior mobility and HR executives a 360-degree view of their mobility programme’s performance, meaningful insights and actionable recommendations.  

In practice it’s a survey, but it’s unlike anything that has been done in the industry before.  Tim O’Shea, Vice President of Consulting Services for Graebel explained that MQ Insight was designed to enable companies to establish the effectiveness of their mobility programme from a combination of internal perspectives, external benchmarking and best practice. The whole process takes just eight weeks.    

“We don’t just talk to the mobility team,” he explained. “We talk to around 15 people across seven different functions within the organisation, including accounts, HR, travel, etc. We ask them 40 questions and for each question the respondent is asked to rate the importance of that aspect of the mobility programme to the organisation and its maturity level. Our job is to take those scores and show how people in the organisation feel about the programme and then benchmark those findings against other organisations in their sector. It’s a very powerful tool.”  As yet Graebel has stayed clear of questioning assignees themselves about their specific experiences.  

Having performed the survey, Graebel benchmarks each customer’s programme against others in their sector and works with the customer to plug any gaps that have been identified in line with the best practice in the industry. In developing the programme Grabel has identified six key problems that mobility leaders face regularly:  

Visibility: They are unable to gauge their programme’s effectiveness, performance and level of integration across multiple functions and so create a strategic improvement plan; 

Executive insight: They lack the necessary insight to identify where their programme excels or falls short so that gaps can be closed;  

Strategic positioning: They cannot demonstrate the quality of their programme or understand how important it is to the workforce;  

Industry expertise: One-size-fits-all industry best practices aren’t specific enough to help them develop a strategy or improvement plan;  

Depth of information: Surveys typically provide limited insights and expensive consulting services usually focus on policy benchmarking;  

Time and resources: They don’t have the time or resources to develop a mobility assessment from scratch.  

“So often we stay at a tactical level with our clients; focussed on solving the day-to-day problems,” said Tim.  “Sometimes we lose sight of some of the broader issues.”  MQ Insight will now provide a mechanism for Graebel to take a much more strategic approach to helping clients long-term. “We can now be a good strategic partner by helping them understand where there are gaps in their programmes, helping them identify changes they need to make themselves and by providing assistance where necessary.”  

MQ Insight is in line with the strategy of the company declared to The Mover Editor, Steve Jordan in an interview with Bill Graebel earlier this year. Bill said that he saw his company as a “disrupter” in the industry that would be looking for a new way of doing business.  “I would like to think that we have the ability to provide a very technologically enabled, customer centric service that is not yet represented in the industry,” he said.   

Bill went on to say that his company was engaging with its workforce and suppliers to provide the best possible service for customers.  He also wanted to link that engagement with “… some really cool technology and financial enablement that solves problems for clients and knits it all together to provide better business intelligence and predictive analytics.”  At the time of the interview MQ Insight had not been developed however it is clear that this is the kind of initiative Bill had in mind.  

MQ Insight is in its very early stages for Graebel and Tim O’Shea recognises that there are some obstacles to overcome with some clients who may feel that it is uncomfortably intrusive.  “But we believe that once those initial reservations are overcome our clients will find their ability to use analytics in a much more creative way will be immensely powerful for them, helping to identify and solve the major strategic problems that they experience every day.”  



Image: MQ Insight is designed to give a 360-degree view of a mobility programme's performance.


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