I hope you’ve all enjoyed a wonderful summer, and that you’re feeling relaxed and refreshed ready for the months ahead. As promised in Belgrade, I am writing to keep you informed of the Association’s plans for the next 12 months, to help you identify and realise opportunities that will help you benefit more fully from your membership.  

As outlined at the conference in Belgrade, we move forward into the Autumn 2017 with a new name - MSPA Europe/Africa - to reflect our growing membership in Africa and more formally represent our African colleagues. A new logo to reflect this name change will be available shortly.

The Board Executive Committee met during the summer to schedule our activities and more closely define our strategy (based on your conference feedback).  A regularly updated schedule will be available to you on our website via the Agenda link at the top right of the home page MSPA Calendar of Events 2017. This will include all scheduled events across the year and beyond.

Upcoming events

We have a Board meeting scheduled on 15^th September, which will be held in Brussels. This will take place alongside our 1^st Shoppers Day, which is scheduled for 14^th September in Kortrijk, Belgium. We anticipate that over 100 shoppers will attend the event, supported by 6 MSPA members from France and Belgium. Our key objective is to improve communication between shoppers and providers, and use the learnings to explore ways to further improve shopper quality across Europe/Africa.

Our 2017 Workshop Week is taking place in Manchester, UK, on 29^th and 30^th November.  We already have a industry-leading speaker list and educational agenda, MSPA Workshop Week 2017, and I’d encourage you all to consider the benefits of sending delegates from your company (either yourselves or your key account personnel) to one or more of these sessions. The feedback from the sessions in past years has always been excellent, and by sending a representative to Connect, Learn and Share, you can ensure that you’re educating/up-skilling your team to help your business move forward in this industry. Book by 20^th September for a 10% discount.

Strategy

Since Belgrade, we have been working as a Board to define a strategy that will support our members and help bring about positive change for the industry.  We have developed our Vision, Mission, Values and Value Proposition to underpin this strategy.

In the coming months and year ahead you will see each element of the strategy become more clearly defined and delivered.  We are taking a professional and structured approach in order to continue to grow our already very successful association.

In addition, we are working closely with the Global Advisory Committee to ensure that the work we’re doing supports the global work which is being carried out to Define the Brand, uphold Ethics and ensure long term Growth. Within the Board, we have re-aligned the work streams to maximise the benefit of our work from both a Regional and Global perspective.

More detailed information regarding our ongoing strategy work can be found within the members section of the website MSPA Members Area.  If you have lost or mislaid your log in details, please request a reminder via the website.

Before signing off, I’d like to invite you to contribute to our website by writing and/or forwarding articles which you believe may benefit other members. I’d also like to remind you that we intend to ask for your input into a Pricing Survey which will be sent out in November, and the results of which will be shared and discussed at the conference in Algarve next May. Pricing is one of the key issues that you highlighted in Belgrade, and I’d ask for your full participation to help begin to remove one of the obstacles that is currently preventing our industry from moving forward as a professional and credible research and insight methodology.

That’s it from me until December! Wishing you all a healthy and prosperous Autumn.

Jill Spencer
President MSPA Europe/Africa