Support in adopting the practices
This page provides information for those people considering applying some or all of the practices of the Investment Management Standard (IMS).
Getting started
To obtain more information about the standard you can either attend the free, 120 minute Investment management information session held in Melbourne each month. Viewing the adoption videos might also help.
For more intensive learning you could attend the facilitator training. Although designed for intending facilitators of the IMS it will provide anyone with an solid understanding of how the practices of the IMS are applied. There is a cost for this training and a booking can be made online.
Adopting a new approach or methodology normally requires a major commitment by management and a program to educate and skill staff. It will then be a year or more before the value of a new approach can be assessed.
This doesn’t need be the case when adopting the IMS. The value of the standard can be gauged in one use. A way forward is to apply the practices to either an existing ‘challenged’ investment or to understand and decide the best response to a serious problem that is facing an organisation. To do this you should engage an accredited facilitator who will professionally apply the current standard. For minimal cost and in a very short time your organisation will be able to witness the impact of the practices and decide how they could be used in the future.
Understanding the terminology used
While the standard aims to use plain English, its ‘foray’ into areas that have not been well understood requires a glossary. This is divided as follows:
Case studies
A small collection of case studies is available to provide real examples of how organisations have applied the practices. These provide some understanding of the outcomes they obtained and the wisdom they have to pass on.
Examples of documents
These are good examples of the documents that are produced. Most are fictional but real examples are used where permission of the organisation has been provided.
What other people think ... media, awards, surveys and testimonials
Many media articles and studies have examined some aspect of the standard. This section also covers awards and comments by people who have used the standard.
Do we need to train in-house facilitators?
First, while the IMS practices are simple to understand, facilitating them to get the best outcomes is not simple at all. For this reason it was necessary to introduce an accreditation process to give investors a level of confidence that the practices would be properly applied.
How to become an accredited facilitator? describes the process of accreditation. An analysis of a large sample of Investment Logic Maps submitted in an annual budget process has shown there is a major difference in the quality of those produced by accredited facilitators compared with others.
People who are not accredited sometimes state they are a ‘trained facilitator’ to give them credibility with investors. The
licence to use IMS materials (clause 4e) requires that facilitators who are not accredited must make this clear to all participants.
Now back to the question. The question of in-house accredited facilitators is regularly asked but there is no single answer. Some large organisations that have a high need for the IMS products have a number of accredited facilitators among their staff. Others might only have one. As the cost of engaging external accredited facilitators is very low in the context of the overall investment many organisations engage them as required from the
accredited facilitator list.
Engaging an accredited facilitator
The
accredited facilitator list provides the profile and costs of all facilitators. When
Shaping a new investment the number of workshops required may be anything from 1 to 4 and will be determined by the complexity of the investment. A better understanding of this is provided in ‘
Guidance- How many workshops’.
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