As the Project Manager at Target Sarl since 2011, Hortense Mbumba is the one planning, organizing projects, preparing proposals, and negotiating projects with clients. Still under her Project Manager position, she takes care of selecting and training filed staffs (interviewers, supervisors and fields managers), client servicing team and external consultants. At the end this year she shares with us all her projects achievements in 2017.

“As for me just as for other colleagues, I started 2017 with fears. It was whether it wins, we improve our sales and expect something better, either we loose with continuous drops on sales, and the agency was to be prepared to cross difficult moments… Today I can say it while smiling but honestly it was not easy”

This how Hortense Mbumba discusses her early 2017.

At the project management department, it can be observed a decrease on quantitative studies while there was an increment on qualitative studies had a significant effect on sales drops. Whereas during implementation, qualitative projects take less time than quantitative ones. There was need to choose between making qualitative studies and invest the remaining time on quantitative studies.  The second option is the one which created improvement and the project management department then adopted this option.

The in charge of the department now confirm that this strategy clearly worked. A part from the improvement done within her department on turnover growth, Mrs Hortense Mbumba thinks that making nationwide media survey was a great innovation within her department in 2017.  She explained that the agency proposes media audience studies in Kinshasa to its clients since its activities launch. This year, we have been able to extend this survey in all DRC regions (the summary of the survey can be find through the following link (https://www.target-sarl.cd/en/content/media-audience-dr-congo-2017) 

This success is also associated to the fact that this year, Target emphasizes more capacity building among its consultants   on market research, up to date professional practices within market research field. So the agency now has a wide data base of professional consultants capable to handle field work independently.  Hortense Mbumba also reveals with satisfaction that consultants are not only available in DRC but also in other English speaking countries where Target now works.

It should be also mentioned the desk research dimension Target included this year. This aspect allowed improve information published. One can remind here the desk study on banks in DRC (https://www.target-sarl.cd/en/content/documentary-research-banks-dr-congo-june-2017), Rwanda (https://www.target-sarl.cd/en/content/desk-research-banks-rwanda-august-2017) and Burundi (https://www.target-sarl.cd/en/content/desk-research-banks-burundi-august-2017)

Hortense Mbumba thinks that Target success this year is due to serious and devotion made by each member of the agency when she overlooks at what 2017 has been, on big breath,  she says about 2017  that ‘’ it is the year of our work improvement”

Talking about 2018 plans, she announces while smiling that ‘’my main 2018 plan is Africa”.  With this announcement, one can well outlines Target ambitions which is conquering Africa. Improving turnover was Target main objective in early 2017. Today, it is the year of having in mind a new vision: conquering Africa …this is way to say that Target is ending 2017 stronger than before!