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The goal is to work smarter, get real value from group efforts, increase efficiency, save time, and streamline the decision-making process.

But how can you accomplish all that without sacrificing stakeholder buy-in, participation, and agreement? How can you fully involve people and their ideas to build consensus? How can you measure the effectiveness of new programs or methodologies? How do you know you are getting the results you want?

The answer is The Concept System®, a proven group process, decision support and performance management software package/program that turns individual ideas into a group road map for action. Whether using the real-time group meeting approach or the CS Global Internet tools, the Concept System synthesizes ideas and opinions so you can objectively evaluate recommendations and results against stated goals and expectations.

With The Concept System, you can:

• dramatically reduce the amount of time spent in meetings
• get a clearer picture of what people think
• engage the organization in knowledge sharing
• communicate ideas and build consensus
• analyze needs and assess outcomes
• measure performance over time
• link planning and action to the strategic goals of the organization.

Your Guide For Turning Ideas Into Action--Fast!

Many organizations prefer the traditional group brainstorming and planning context for Concept System initiatives. CSI's Internet-based CSGlobal meets the needs of global and technology-savvy companies by enabling worldwide anytime participation in a planning or assessment initiative, gets ideas and opinions fast, and gets the results back to the participants so that their ideas are turned into action.

The Concept System or CSGlobal can be used in virtually any situation where it's important to gather information, build consensus, evaluate ideas or programs and take action:

• Training and Curriculum Development - assess needs, develop curricula, and measure the benefits or outcomes of training.
• Corporate University - plan, develop, and assess the impact of employee-centered learning, and link it to the corporation's goals.
• Consulting - determine client needs, speed up the collaborative process, and give clients results they can measure.
• Strategic planning - gather information, prioritize actions, and reach agreement on direction.
• Business process re-engineering - develop criteria, secure buy-in, and evaluate results.
• Product development - define and evaluate product concepts, and build consensus around initiatives.
• Marketing - facilitate focus groups, track product acceptance, and identify customer preferences.
• Performance management - set standards and assess programs and people using measures that are linked to goals.
• Customer Service - measure customer satisfaction and determine ways to deliver service more effectively.

A Structure For Unlimited Ideas

With The Concept System, a virtually unlimited number of people can brainstorm ideas on any issue giving you the broadest base from which to draw conclusions or plan action. Everyone in the work group has an equal opportunity to express opinions, openly or anonymously, together or independently. This makes each participant a stakeholder in the project and its outcome, which is presented graphically in concept maps.

Yet, because the process is structured with a definite beginning, middle, and end, the participants won't get tied up in endless meetings or discussions. Work that used to take weeks can be successfully completed in a few focused sessions or over the Internet within hours.

Putting Ideas Into Action
Most group productivity software stops with the idea collection process. But The Concept System does more. It is the only effective software tool for organizing and tracking a project over time in order to evaluate whether problem areas are addressed and goals are met.

The Concept System takes the ideas that were gathered during the collection process, sorts and rates them for importance (or other factors as outlined by the specific project) based on the opinions of the people involved and creates full color concept maps that show the critical relationships among those ideas. Participants can then use the maps to organize and strategize for action.

The Concept System also builds customized pattern matches that provide visual and statistical comparisons of any two measurements of interest. You can assess the consensus among different groups to see, for example, if managers and staff agree on strategic direction. You can track the consistency of performance over time, such as to see if your training is consistently getting high-quality results. You can evaluate outcomes and monitor if you are getting the results you expected. Pattern matches keep projects focused by showing clearly whether the expectations of various groups are being met.

Together, Concept Mapping and Pattern Matching make The Concept System one of the most powerful decision support software tools available. It can:

• gather information from a virtually unlimited number of participants
• apply the latest Internet technologies for rapid access to the initiative
• produce results based on a powerful statistical engine and generate a group map from the combined input of individuals in the group
• graphically match the opinions of various groups of stakeholders
• provide a real assessment of outcomes against goals

The Concept System reduces the time it takes to develop even the most detailed of projects. Our approach builds consensus and can track and evaluate performance to ensure your project's goals are met.

A Proven System
The Concept System has been used successfully by major management consulting firms, corporations, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations for strategic planning, needs assessment, training curriculum development and evaluation, performance and program evaluation, and focus groups.

The Concept System was developed by William Trochim, Ph.D., Professor of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and co-founder of Concept Systems, Incorporated. Dr. Trochim is internationally recognized for his work in evaluation methods including conceptualization approaches, causal assessment, experimental design, and the theory of validity in research.