Market Research
Understanding the Market Opportunity and Risks
Launching a new online program requires considerable time and effort so it is important that the right program is picked at the right time. Before launching a new initiative, we will evaluate the competitive landscape, branding, institutional resources and faculty engagement. We have found this in-depth market research essential to validating long-term program viability and minimizing risk.
Understanding the Market
Opportunity and Risks
Instructional Design
Leveraging our 20 years of experience to design innovative business education programs
We believe one of the biggest challenges in developing a successful online program is establishing the right curriculum and course design elements. To reduce risk in these areas, we work carefully with our partners to make sure the best university resources are utilized, the curriculum and program design is optimized and the production process is as simple as possible for our partners. Each of these steps require a thoughtful, project management style mind set. Our approach to this area includes the following services:
- 1Curriculum design.
Determining faculty, teaching assistants, number of courses, length of program, topics covered - 2Course Production.
Developing scripts, creating visuals and charts, filming the instructors and post-production - 3Development of weekly quizzes and activities
- 4Moderation of weekly live format discussions.
Synchronous discussions with the students
Marketing
Data drives a comprehensive marketing approach
Since 2013 we have enrolled more than 100,000 students in our online courses. We leverage lessons learned to maximize our partners’ marketing efforts and work closely with key university stakeholders and university marketing departments to best understand their brand and subsequent positioning.
After deciding on goals, strategy and messaging, we use a combination of direct response marketing, social media, search engine marketing, and advertising to execute on the established goals. These marketing efforts are reinforced by our strong business-to-business capabilities which leverage our international saleforce and nearly 20 years servicing the financial service clients. Finally, our technology team designs a program-specific website which serves as a marketing instrument for the program enabling prospective students to learn about the program.
In each instance we leverage our proprietary online analytical models to assess campaign effectiveness, allowing us to make real-time adjustments to respond to the trends in data.
Technology
Immersive, secure and flexible technology platform
FFI leverages the latest technology tools to deliver a state-of-the-art online learning experience. Our learning management system is built on the open-source edX platform developed at Harvard and MIT and is then customized to address the needs of our partners with the goal of a creating a highly immersive social learning experience.
We take every precaution to ensure student data is secure (consistent with regulatory guidelines) and that our systems are reliably backed up to avoid downtime. In addition to security and user experience our platform is favored by many institutions because of its in-depth student analytics functionality and reporting capabilities.
As with instructional design, no two school partnership technology solutions are the same. Some partners prefer that we handle everything technology-wise while others prefer to host the courses and marketing on their own platforms. We remain completely flexible on these matters and are committed to working with our school partners to ensure the right technology solution is provided at the right time.
A state-of-the-art
online learning experience
Testing
Our unique stand-alone testing and assessment capabilities allow partners to quickly offer a comprehensive online program.
One of the most valuable pieces that FFI is our existing infrastructure of financial certificates.
Today, we offer three stand-alone Certifications:
- Certificate in Capital Markets Foundations® (CMF®);
- International Certificate in Corporate Finance® (ICCF® )
- Certificate in Capital Market Operations® (CMO®)
Each of these tracks includes 25 hours of e-learning, a comprehensive text book and 250 study questions. At the end of the program, participants take a two-hour exam we have designed at one of 4,000 Pearson Vue Centers worldwide.
We leverage these exams as part of our co-branded efforts and believe the depth and validity of these final exams bring an added sense of value to the programs we enable. In addition, our testing engine and capabilities enable us to quickly develop and deploy customized exams based on partner needs.