annual report 2019 draft · 2019. 9. 1. · rqa strategy revisited the rqa board reviews the...
TRANSCRIPT
RQA ANNUAL REPORT 2019
CONTENTS
3 VISION, MISSION AND STRATEGY 6 THE BOARD 7 CHAIRMAN’S REPORT 9 TREASURER’S REPORT 11 FACTS & FIGURES:
MEMBERSHIP SURPLUS/DEFICIT INCOME COSTS
13 GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT REPORT
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VISION, MISSION AND STRATEGY
RQA Strategy Revisited
The RQA Board reviews the Association's strategy annually; it’s part of the process of setting operational objectives and agreeing on a financial budget for the coming year.
When RQA (formerly BARQA) was incorporated in 1997, its Vision and Mission were:
Vision Quality and integrity in scientific research and development.
Mission To develop and promote quality standards in scientific research and development.
To facilitate knowledge sharing and transfer through discussion, training, seminars, conferences, publications and partnership.
To liaise with regulatory agencies in the development and interpretation of regulations and guidance.
The Board recently reviewed these proclamations and agreed on the development and publication of new Vision and Mission statements:
Vision To inspire quality, integrity and compliance, in scientific research.
Mission Providing knowledge and learning in the scientific research community, by building expertise through training, communication, engagement and collaboration. 3
VISION, MISSION AND STRATEGY
The new Vision and Mission created the impetus to re-examine the strategy, and to create a framework for the future.
The revised strategy encompasses seven pillars to support the Vision and Mission:
Product and service development – understanding member and customer demands, creating new products and services to meet the member and customer demands and expectations, conducting periodic product reviews;
Knowledge-sharing and communication – gathering and distributing intelligence including regulation and guidance, hot topics and news;
Collaboration and engagement – listening to members and customers, engaging with regulators, and liaising with authorities;
Education – delivering learning on a global scale, developing a QA qualification, and creating online learning solutions;
Growth – building a greater presence, discovering new markets, finding new customers, introducing new members, and collaborating with societies that share common objectives;
Performance – maximising opportunities to gather feedback, taking action from any feedback received, measuring member satisfaction, developing meaningful reports, and agreeing on expectations;
Sustainability – maintaining relevance, creating the infrastructure to deliver, developing processes for more accurate forecasting and monitoring, and being increasing aware of the need for succession planning.
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VISION, MISSION AND STRATEGY
The strategy is used to create two separate documents; the operational plan and the financial budget.
The operational plan provides the detail of how the strategy will be met. Each element of the strategy is cascaded from the top-level objective down to clearly defined tasks in the plan.
The completion of the tasks leads to the implementation of the strategy – the two are inextricably linked.
The cascade continues until the entire strategy has been translated into an operational plan with a range of detailed tasks.
Armed with the knowledge of what tasks need to be completed, the RQA office is able to prepare a financial budget with a degree of assurance of the accuracy of the content. The financial budget attempts to itemise all anticipated income and expenditure. The budget has to consider what is likely to be delivered in the forthcoming financial year.
At the same time, through the strategy meetings with the Board and Management Committee, the new strategy is introduced to the Committee and Working Party chairs who each provide valuable input on the planned and present activity.
All ongoing product development, including seminars, is captured in an extensive Gantt Chart; the Product Pipeline, which is maintained by the office and discussed at each Board and strategy meeting.
Over the following months, the RQA Board, the Management Committee, the Committees and Working Parties, the Volunteer Programme and the RQA Office, complete the specified tasks and implement the necessary changes and improvements.
August 2019 5
RQA BOARD K Williams - Chair of the Board V Grant - Past Chair R Cope - Treasurer T Gilbert - Global Engagement L Mawer - Strategy Overview (Resigned) T Stiles (Co-opted) S Thanathparambil (Co-opted) M Jones (Co-opted)
RQA COMMITTEES AND WORKING PARTIES S Buckingham - Animal & Veterinary Products Committee T Simmons - DIGIT Committee G Sandom - Good Clinical Practice Committee M Goodwin - Good Laboratory Practice Committee D Murphy - Good Manufacturing Practice Committee L Handy - Good Pharmacovigilance Practice Committee C McIntyre - Medical Devices Committee T Simmons - Data Integrity Working Party L Price - Good Tissues Practice Working Party L Mawer - Good Research Practice Working Party K Wilson - Regulatory Affairs Working Party
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THE BOARD (2018-2019)
CHAIR’S REPORT
Dear Colleagues,
This Annual Report covers the year May 2018 to April 2019; which was a particularly challenging time for the
Association.
The RQA Board continued to concentrate on Strategy, especially the development and delivery of new products and services, which allow the Association to grow.
Over the past twelve months, the Board met four times, with each meeting lasting two or three days. Additional meetings, by teleconference, were necessary to discuss and agree on specific topics.
The Treasurer’s Report and the Directors’ Report (Statutory Accounts) contain the detail of the financial position and the challenges the Association faced through the year. It’s good to see the reserves improving - the organisation is now in a significantly better position than it was twelve months ago.
A key driver of income is the delivery of new products and services. Like all other market sectors, our members and customers are always searching for the latest news, knowledge and learning.
Through the increased discussions between the Board, the Committees, the Working Parties and the RQA office, there has been a renewed focus on the development of new products. Thanks to the efforts of the Committees and Working Parties, the new Product Pipeline is extremely healthy.
The RQA Conference in Manchester was a massive success, Thanks to all involved – the programme committee, session owners, chairs, speakers, and not forgetting sponsors and exhibitors – their support was invaluable.
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With an emphasis on strategy, the Board took a step back to assess the ongoing relevance of the RQA Vision and Mission. From the many discussions, the Vision and Mission were revised, which then drove the changes to the Strategy. The new Strategy is already beginning to gain some traction.
Fortunately, the heavy investment into the CRM System is starting to pay dividends; the marketing insights we’re getting into website visitor behaviour means we’re better informed of their needs. Equally, the in-house development of eLearning courses is also paying-off; sales of eLearning were the highest ever (since 2010-2011).
The introduction of online member applications in 2019 was a significant leap forward for the Association. More and more, we’re finding that new members like the ability to self serve.
We continue to develop the RQA website by adding new content and functionality. As a result, we continue to attract more website users - 113,497 in the past year, each looking at five pages on average. 26% of those web users were from the United States.
I would like to express my appreciation for the efforts of our volunteers, Committee and Working Party members, and my fellow Board Members. RQA would not be able to achieve what it does without your input - thank you. The RQA staff work tirelessly for our association and I truly appreciate their efforts.
I would also like to say thank you to all our members; thanks to you, RQA is a leading global association.
Vanessa Grant, FRQA
Acting RQA Chair 8
CHAIR’S REPORT
Dear members,
This has been a year of changes for the organisation, necessitated primarily by the needs of our members and the requirement to build a healthy reserve to maintain financial flexibility.
Membership numbers have remained stable and continue to generate a steady source of income.
Course revenue has declined slightly over the past year, but several brand new courses are looking very promising, and the accessibility of learning opportunities is improving significantly. Financial control over courses is good, with very few showing a loss, even those with low attendance.
Current attendance for courses in Q1 2019 is better than last year, and in-house courses continue to do well.
Conference income is consistent with previous years, with the forthcoming Dublin conference showing strong sales. Securing a competitive price for future conference venues has been heavily researched; some venues have even offered the possibility of free hosting.
You may remember last year that I talked about cost-cutting initiatives implemented in the office to facilitate building up of our reserve, which ideally we would like to be back up at £400k within the next few years.
Due to some very sustained efforts by the office, we have succeeded in cutting costs in nearly all areas, which has further been enhanced by improvements in efficiency, and not replacing the two staff who left our employment.
Reserves declined overall this year, as illustrated by the graph overleaf, but at the time of writing our reserves have recovered to just over £300k, as all our initiatives in course development, conferences and cost-cutting have started to kick-in. Q4 2018 was the most successful in the last five quarters, showing a break-even situation. 9
TREASURER’S REPORT
In summary, the office has been working extremely hard to meet the evolving expectations of our members and provide good value for money.
Financial reporting and visibility have developed giving the Board a better feel for the factors that can affect our reserves, profitability, and associated changes.
Member needs are always difficult to determine, so I would urge all members to complete the Membership Satisfaction Survey, and other short surveys - your feedback is important.
As mentioned last year, I would also ask all RQA members to consider their involvement in the Volunteer Programme to help us develop new courses and products that will support the ongoing viability of the organisation.
Roger Cope RQA Treasurer August 2019 10
TREASURER’S REPORT
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
300000
350000
400000
450000
500000
Reserves (£)
FACTS & FIGURES 2018-2019
11
2,182 2,187 2,111 2,162 2,166
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
-140000
-120000
-100000
-80000
-60000
-40000
-20000
0
20000Surplus/Deficit (£)
Membership numbers change throughout the calendar year. We lose around 200-300 members at each renewal, but gain a similar number in the following 12 months. At the end of the financial year we record the number of members; since this is always at the end of the renewals period, the numbers appear to be low.
A modest profit in 2017 turned to a significant loss in 2018 mainly due to the development and the implementation of the (CRM) Customer Relationship Management system. In the financial year ending April 2019, the losses are mainly attributable to the depreciation of the new CRM system and an adjustment relating to unrecoverable VAT.
FACTS & FIGURES 2018-2019
12
50%
25%
17%
5%
2% 1%
Administration Courses and Seminars
Conferences and Regional Fora Publications
Establishment Advertising and sundry expenditure
KEY ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE
48%
27%
18%
3% 1% 1% 1%
Courses and Seminars Conferences and Regional Fora
Membership ELearning
Advertising Publications
Corporate Sponsorship
KEY ITEMS OF INCOME
The provision of learning accounted for almost 80% of all income in the year ending April 2019. Membership Subscriptions formed 18% of all income.
50% of all costs related to administration, while 45% of costs accounted for the provision of learning.
GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT REPORT
Dear members, Through a clearly-defined strategy of globalisation and collaboration, the RQA continues to provide high quality news, information, learning, knowledge, and other services, which are valued by members and customers around the world. During 2018/2019 we continued with our established global Regional Fora in the United States, Canada and Ireland, and re-ignited another in India. Thanks in large part to the dedication of Yasser Farooq and Jamila Joseph.
RQA/NERCSQA Boston, MA, US 26 June 2018 Quality Collaborations RQA/NCCSQA Raleigh, NC, US 8/9 October 2018 GXP Data Integrity Ireland Dublin, Ireland 11 October 2018 Regulatory & Technology Advancements Canada Brampton, ON 26/27 October 2018 Research and Data Integrity for GxP India Mumbai, India 3 February 2019 Data Integrity, QMS and ICH E6 R2
This will continue into 2019/2020. Already in the RQA calendar, we have the following events planned:
US – 'e-Quality Assurance'; e-Integrity, e-Data and e-Systems including apps, social media and data capture
systems/platforms—Philadelphia, 1st October 2019.
Canada - Regulatory Inspection and Research Challenges; - Montreal, 26th September 2019.
India – theme not yet decided, but planned for Mumbai, April 2020. 13
These fora allow us to build strong collaborative relationships with our global members and attract new members to RQA in the respective regions. Additionally, RQA continues to seek out new collaborative partnerships with organisations which complement our core business. 2019 sees the return of the highly-popular European QA Conference, previously held in 2013 and 2016. The third conference is hosted by RQA, GQMA and SoFAQ with the support of other European Associations; Spain (SEGCIB) and The Netherlands (DARQA). The conference brings quality professionals and European Regulators together to discuss common opportunities within Quality. It will take place in Dublin, Ireland 6 – 8 November 2019, title; “Technology and Innovation in Quality: A brave New World?”. With regards to Brexit, it’s very much business as usual for RQA; we’re fortunate that our business model has an international perspective. Looking slightly further into the future, RQA will also be represented at the Global QA Conference, hosted by JSQA, in Sendai, 17 – 20 February 2020. There, we look forward to meeting and collaborating with our QA colleagues.
Tracy Gilbert Global Engagement August 2019
GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT REPORT
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