Information Resources Reviews

Pros

Good clients, motivated co-workers, decent compensation and benefits

Cons

High turnover, constant reorganization, difficult clients at times,

Advice to Senior Management

Need a broader product line and/or more industries to sell against.

Pros

Fair salary, benefits good. Good client base

Cons

Managers and above look after themselves and will do whatever it takes to look good to senior exectives

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to staff and accept they know things your are blind to

Pros

Work/Life balance
Ability to work from home
Generous vacation benefits
Lots of data and products to learn
On average good managers

Cons

Lower compensation than industry
Losing talent after being sold to the new Private Equity firm
Lofty revenue goals that are later used to take away your bonus
Sneaky management that boasts of themselves in Town Hall meetings when they earn new clients, but shy away from facing the labor force when they decide to cut your salary.

Company would do anything to meet revenue goals even if it means to shed talented and highly paid people

At times of cost-cutting, company gravitates toward freezing salaries rather than bonuses that clearly shows that unless you are in Sales or a bonus level, your yearly salary will keep going below the CPG consulting firms every year.

Company stands to be outdone by competitors in a couple of years due to lags in technology, and heavy reliance on off-shore teams that cannot bring any insights to executed projects.

Advice to Senior Management

The CEO has to be let go
Salaries have to be increased to catch up with industry
Either the compensation is adjusted or talent will leave within the next year

Pros

No one micro managing you, you work solo. Adequate amount of paid training time. Flexible hours. Paid travel time.

Cons

You must be efficient and fairly fast to make a decent paycheck. Equipment is old, desperately needs to be updated.

Advice to Senior Management

Give feedback to employees on job performance. Consider bonuses for motivation on finding "new" items. A raise would be nice.

Pros

flexible working arrangement
IRI is a well known name in the industry and it looks good on your resume, which will help you to get in the door of cpg companys.
don't promote from within, rather hire people from outside who don't have many knowledge about IRI's products and services.

Cons

lack of career growth opportunity
poor compensation
too many b level people

Advice to Senior Management

provide growth opportunity
promote from within more
better compensation and bonus package

Pros

Good work life balance.
Eventually get the opportunity to work on some top CPG companies.
Learn nearly everything about market research and decide your career path.
Technology department thinks big and works to push out cutting edge solutions/software.

Cons

Salaries are relatively low which is a trade for work/life balance.
Roles can be tedious if you don't have support staff (GOC/India or Service level help)

Advice to Senior Management

Management already knows they need to focus on perfecting the latest technology (ILD/Advantage solutions).
Stop dishing out high salaries to outsiders who have "consulting" experience and focus on developing your existing talent.
Eliminate sales force redundancy. There's no reason to have four dogs fighting over one bone.

Pros

Many of the employees are wonderful to work with. They are generally good, kind people that work hard and are good at what they do.
There is less of a competitiveness at IRI than at most other companies, and more of a team spirit, however that seems to be changing.
The company offers a lot of options and flexibility for a wonderful work/life balance.

Cons

Focus is too heavy on the technology teams, and much less on the actual analytics, despite the company saying they are working to become more consultative.
Very, very little training available (plenty of online training classes, but these are generic or of little value to an employee after the 1st year).

Pros

Some of the most creative analytical people work here. A sincere attempt was made to help people balance work and home life.

Cons

IT organization was completely outsourced to India and eventually the company was sold to a multi-national from India. What is left is just their sales force. All reporting, database information and tracking resides overseas.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

Location, IRI has a great location near west loop that is easy to access. The building on Clinton is a restored building makes it a a nice setting to work in.

Cons

Not focused on the big picture and building lasting relationships with customers for years to come, by outsourcing support and engineering IRI are allowing someone else to take care of their customer.

Pros

SymphonyIRI has a fast paced culture with opporutnities to learn. The people who work here are bright and can be considered industry experts.

Cons

At SymphonyIRI, different areas of the company don't communicate well. It would be nice for the right hand to know what the left hand is doing.

Advice to Senior Management

I would advise the leadership team to communicate better with each other, which will influence their staff, encouraging them to work better together.