PeriscopeIQ Provides Insights and Intelligence to the Project Management Institute

About PMI

The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world’s leading not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession, with more than a million members and credential holders in more than 180 countries.  Their worldwide advocacy for project management is supported by globally recognized standards and credentials, extensive research programs, and professional development opportunities. PMI is widely regarded as an expert in employment and compensation issues for project managers worldwide, publishing countless research reports and studies annually around the world

The Challenge

Many years ago, PMI management determined that the organization needed to assess the PM industry on a more comprehensive, global basis and needed to understand how the recession was affecting project manager salaries, which couldn’t be determined. “At the time, PMI used outside research firms on a sporadic basis and lacked a formalized approach when I came on board,” explains Jason Dolfi, manager organization products. “In addition, PMI needed more reliable data and better reporting capabilities, as well as, a higher member rate of response.”

Researching A Better Solution

PeriscopeIQ was engaged to provide two major research platforms, one for quarterly surveys of members using the PeriscopeIQ’s Employee Insights solution (PeriscopeMX). A second equally important initiative was to compile, analyze and report on industry salaries using PeriscopeCOMP and other tools.

Superior Membership Feedback Using PeriscopeMX

As customer feedback management experts, PeriscopeIQ instituted a more consistent and formal system for measuring member satisfaction. Conducted on a quarterly basis, PMI learned more about member satisfaction levels. They also handled customer support and certification for tracking, on a quarterly basis.

Project Management Salary Perspectives with PeriscopeCOMP

PeriscopeCOMP is a unique, online compensation survey platform ideal for aligning compensation strategies with employee expectations. It provides data on how compensation strategies impact morale, productivity and employee retention. PeriscopeCOMP also includes a process for ensuring the effectiveness of targeted incentives.  It adeptly and economically handles a wide array of compensation and incentive intelligence tasks, including:

• National or regional compensation studies
• Ad-hoc or client compensation studies
• Employee benefit studies
• Sales incentive design studies
• Compensation value optimization studies

PMI used PeriscopeIQ’s compensation platform to survey and produce reports for close to 20 countries (now expanded to 42 countries in 2019) on a country by country basis. This project was one of the world’s largest project manager specific salary surveys and positioned PMI as thought leaders.  On the back end, PeriscopeIQ provided strategic insights, which added a deeper level of understanding of the Project Management profession.  PeriscopeIQ collected self-reported salary information from the membership base and shared the findings with the professionals. “This was a great way to dramatically increase the number of participants, which was approximately 30-40 percent. The data was not only more reliable, but highly useful,” Dolfi says.

PMI was able to leverage the data as well as position itself as a thought leader. The Wall Street Journal quoted PMI’s study, which showed that in the global recession, salaries of project managers were increasing, which validates why project management is an attractive discipline. Dolfi notes, “this is another tangible benefit our members get for being part of the profession.”

PMI’S Perspective on PeriscopeIQ–Trusted Intelligence and Insight

According to Dolfi, “PeriscopeIQ helps companies create programs, not just a survey. They become part of our operations and then they help with strategic thinking. This aspect separates them – they go beyond the data. They have a very clear value proposition and core competency, and that is delivering very high-value and high-quality research. “I see them as more of a high-end vendor in terms of their capabilities and staff. They have a lot of PhDs on staff, and we work with them and through their network. Those people spend a lot of time with the data, and that’s one of the more unique aspects of their organization.”