Beginning in 2014, The Market Research Society (MRS) have held The Operations Awards, or 'Oppies', an awards ceremony recognising the great work from companies in the operational side of our industry. Cobalt Sky are very proud to have been a part of these awards from the start. Find out more about our success at 'The Oppies' below.
Since the MRS started 'The Oppies' back in 2014, Cobalt Sky have had the honour of being selected as finalists for awards every year. We’ve been shortlisted in a few different categories over this time, but their main prize, Operational Excellence, has been our most frequent success. For each of the years 'The Oppies' have been running we've been Operational Excellence finalists, winning it seven times, most recently in 2024 but also in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. In two of the years we didn't win the main prize, the judges awarded us the status of 'Highly Commended'.
In addition to Operational Excellence, we've been finalists in the Best Data Collection (online) category every year, winning it three times in a row, from 2021-2023 and being 'Highly Commended' in 2019 and 2024.
Given the fierce competition in these categories, we see our continued success at The Oppies as an acknowledgement that our team have been consistently delivering an incredibly high standard for many years.
Awards
“Cobalt Sky stood out with their holistic approach, including their ‘Right on Time, First Time’ commitment. The metrics for project delivery times, budgets and communication are all very impressive. This is supported by a robust approach to the MRS Code of Conduct, data protection and ISO standards plus strong commitments to EDI and sustainability. ”
“Cobalt Sky continue to impress the judges and their clients with their above and beyond approach to service delivery. They are viewed as a true and trusted partner by their clients who are clearly standing out within the industry. ”
“Cobalt Sky has yet again demonstrated how they continue to deliver exceptional online data collection. Their client was thrilled with how agile, innovative and creative they were in building their survey and live dashboard system. Excellent supporting statements from their clients highlight how they see Cobalt Sky as a true partner who consistently delivers data of the highest quality. ”
“Cobalt Sky’s excellent entry demonstrated clearly how they evolved their business to meet the challenges of Covid-19 and continued to deliver fantastic customer service, building on strong partnership working with their clients. The ‘right on time, first time’ metric of customer satisfaction is a great way of tracking quality and delivery across the business – and the impressive metrics testify to the success of the approach. Overall Cobalt Sky is a very worthy winner of our Premier Award for Operational Excellence. ”
“The commitment to delivering quality data and exceptional client servicing shone through Cobalt Sky’s entry. They demonstrated genuine innovation and creativity in the design of a complex survey. Their client called them ‘a fantastic Data Collection Partner who delivers outstanding results’ – we couldn’t argue with that! ”
“Cobalt Sky created a statistically-driven Google search environment to allow the most interactive and realistic experience for respondents taking part in this project. The research was for The Behavioural Architects working on behalf of Google. The experience was designed to test what makes online adverts most appealing. A great deal of care was taken to replicate fonts, icons and backgrounds etc. so everything displayed authentically on different devices. A pilot was undertaken to ensure the thousands of versions of conjoint could be fully scaled. The judges noted the complexity and the attention to detail, as well as impressive scale of this research. ”
“Cobalt Sky demonstrate their business ethos extremely well. Their continuous learning and development and utilisation of MRS resources is impressive. In addition they proactively offer innovative, leading edge solutions via partners where required. Great focus to their customers and accurate automated solutions means their customers spend their time on the interpretation of research data. All this is underpinned by broad training of their staff to ensure they understand the end-to-end workflow and GDPR obligations. ”
“For the second year in a row, Cobalt Sky's submission clearly showed how they continue to provide an excellent service to all their clients. Their commitment to quality, customer focus and technical excellence is backed up by impressive annual KPI's - across 492 jobs they scored 99.2% on customer satisfaction and 99.2% on delivering jobs right on time, the first time. Their glowing client testimonials reinforced their submission - as one client summed them up, 'Cobalt Sky are incredibly proactive and flexible, they truly add value to our work and they're an extension to our team. ”
“Cobalt Sky delivers on all levels. They add value to their customers with fantastic service and support, coupled with technical excellency. Their commitment to quality and continual improvement shines through their entry. Exceptional metrics supported their submission with 521 projects being delivered in the last 12 months with 99.7% of these according to their clients – ‘Right, On Time, First time’. ”
“Cobalt Sky demonstrated close client collaboration, understanding and engagement in research objectives and efficient delivery of data to the latest UK and international quality standards. ”
Judges