isi Sensory Services
Our new Sensory Services
Sensory Panel Development & Management
For more than 15 years, sensory expert panels and descripitive analysis in over 30 categories are our daily business. Until now, we solely managed our own panels – 17 client exclusive and 2 allround panels, some also at international locations. But with increased requests from clients to support them in building and maintaining their own panel, we decided to share our expertise and leverage it in our new sensory services!
With our Sensory Panel Development & Management, we support your in-house or external sensory expert panels and your panel leaders in three areas: Sensory Panel Set-up & Maintenance, Sensory Software Solutions and Sensory Panel Certification. A high-quality panel management will help you support your product developers and convince internal stakeholders with more robust and reliable data.
Sensory Expert Panels
What Is a Descriptive Panel?
Basically, a sensory expert panel, also called descriptive panel, is a group of people with above-average odour and taste perceptions. Each panel consists of 10-14 experts who are trained on a specific product category. They are able to objectively characterize products in their sensory perception - with all five senses.
You can use a descriptive panel for numerous tasks in product sensory design and development. Their application ranges from comparing different raw material suppliers to competitor products, evaluating recipe changes, product aging/quality to preselecting samples for further tests, explaining consumer complaints and generating product claims. In each case, a high-quality sensory expert panel generates robust and reliable data to improve your product development and convince internal stakeholders.
.jpg "sensory panel set-up and maintenance can be done either in-house or external")
Sensory Panel Development & Maintenance
Sensory Panel Set-Up and Maintenance
Setting up and maintaining a descriptive panel takes a lot of steps, like the recruitment and training of panellists and panel leaders, establishing sensory data analysis and executing regular performance checks. But even before the set-up begins, you need to make a decision on the probably most important question: will you go for an in-house panel or an external panel? Depending on your company’s individual situation, one or the other route may be the best solution.
Our set-up and maintenance services support you during the whole planning and designing process of a panel. In a working session with your team, we assess your needs and individually design the most effective route fitting your product development flow. That may be an outright in-house panel, a costumer -exclusive panel at our isi facilities, a slot in one of our allround panels available to all clients, or an internationally located panel at one of our worldwide partners. After that decision, we further support you during the whole set-up and maintenance process, individually tailored to your needs.
.jpg "sensory software solutions can be training tools, project management, data analysis or booking tools")
Sensory Panel Development & Maintenance
Sensory Software Solutions
Being trapped in habits leads to always doing the same things in the same way without questioning them. We constantly face the challenge of keeping up with the speed of the market and finding new digital solutions. A simple and quick readjustment can help save time and work more efficiently. We offer software solutions that make your work with sensory expert panels much easier.
Over the past 15 years, we have faced many challenges that we have overcome by implementing unique software solutions. We want to share this know-how with you to take your panel to a new level of efficiency. Therefore, we offer digital tools for training, panelist management, data collection and analysis, as well as digital booking tools for panellists. Our aim is to implement useful software that reduces time-consuming administrative tasks so that your panel leaders can focus on the fundamental parts of the panel work. All the tools offered are implemented in our isi laboratories and have proven to be very useful for our ways of working.
.jpg "sensory panel certification entails an audit, an action plan and continuous monitoring")
Sensory Panel Development & Maintenance
Sensory Panel Certification
Have you ever had issues convincing internal stakeholders about the reliability of your sensory expert panel`s data? Or just had the need of reviewing your data quality/ panel performance? An external audit of your internal sensory expert panels helps to uncover issues, implement necessary adaptations and ensure overall accuracy and efficiency.
Our sensory panel certification enables you to ensure the data quality of your panel. This process consists of an audit, in which we uncover any potential weaknesses or inefficiencies. We then provide you with an action plan with helpful recommendations on how to further improve your panel work. After all potential adjustments are completed, we monitor the transformation and issue our unique isi certificate, which is valid 2 years.
During this process we use our 15 years of experience in sensory expert panels and descriptive analysis to ensure our advice is valid for building powerful and professional panels.