On behalf of the entire Repères team, I wish you all the best for 2009 and much success personally and professionally.
The beginning of the new year is always a time for reflection, even more so this year which has started in an atmosphere highly conducive to anxiety.
I would therefore like to take this opportunity to step back from this very short-term and hackneyed vision of the crisis to share with you some of the medium-term strategic issues for Repères.
From my standpoint as the CEO, I believe that in such periods of uncertainty there is all the more need for us to focus on respecting the core identity of the company (the values and mission) AND at the same time to renew and optimise everything that is not a part of this core identity (organisation, process, methods…).
This belief is largely exposed in the writings of the American academic Jim Collins:
"The most enduring and successful corporations distinguish their timeless core values and enduring core purpose (which should never change) from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world)" Jim Collins - Built to last
In the case of Repères our core values are the following:
Our mission is “to help companies design, develop, optimise and market their offers of products and services”.
In accomplishing this mission we respect four core values:
. Rigour, with high-quality services,
. Honesty and ethics
. A spirit of partnership with our clients and internally with our different teams,
. A permanent quest for progress, in individual terms and regarding processes.
These core values are not destined to change. However, with the aim of making all the rest evolve, we constantly seek to optimise our methods and processes to ensure we are always in synch with the needs and constraints of our clients. This has led us to successfully innovate in certain areas of research (testing products and brand images, qualitative studies...) in which the application of innovative approaches generates enhanced relevance and more value for money.
This strategy is a response to our objectives for the next 5 years which translate into a vision. Hence the Repères vision for the period 2006-2011 is as follows:
« In 2011, Repères is the research institute which is:
. Connected globally,
. Has renewed and continued to renew the tools of the profession,
. By being a reference in terms of methodology and innovation »
This vision is clearly associated with the Repères positioning: the aim is to renew research tools, not as an end in themselves, but in order to provide the most valuable contributions for our partner-clients.
I propose we meet in 2001 to assess the realization of this vision :-)
