Read about the workshop at Evolve (one of the highest attended workshops of the day!)

How Operational Research can improve your organisation’s decision making

#Evolve 2014(Greater Manchester)

Pro Bono O.R. was invited to run a workshop at Evolve (Greater Manchester) 2014 which was hosted by GMCVO in partnership with NVCO.

The workshop was one of the highest attended workshops of the day and had extremely positive feedback.

Here’s a brief summary of what was covered:

The purpose of OR is to enable managers to make more effective decisions.  Those decisions could be strategic, tactical or extremely detailed issues. It may be appropriate to help in providing information through, for example, forecasting.  O.R can help through problem structuring, data gathering, modelling etc.  O.R. can be qualitative or quantitative or in many cases a combination of the two.

Some examples of Pro Bono projects were given before encouraging participants to consider the problems that their organisations faced that might be helped by O.R.

Third Sector organisations face extremely complex decisions about the direction they should take and how to allocate scarce resources. The OR Society wants more organisations to benefit from Operational Research and recognises that 3^rd sector organisations have an even greater need to be more efficient. 

 These are some of the problems third sector organisations are faced with:

•‘We have lots of different options for the future but it’s impossible to decide which to choose in such uncertain times.’

• ‘We’re under huge pressure to do more with less, and we don’t know how we’re going to do it.’

• ‘It’s hard to stay objective when we’re faced with such emotionally charged decisions.’

• ‘We know we’re doing a good job – but how can we prove it?’

The OR Society felt that O.R. could help and set up Pro Bono O.R.

After the workshop this is what some of the attendees said:

‘I came to this workshop as I didn’t know what O.R. was, I can say it’s the best workshop I’ve been to in a long time and I really bought into it’

‘We didn't know O.R. could help until we spoke to you’

‘What you said made a huge impression’

To find out more about Pro Bono O.R. visit http://www.theorsociety.com/Pages/Probono/Probono.aspx or email felicity.mcleister@theorsociety.com