Editor’s note: The below is an excerpt from the authors’ book, “The Consumer Insights Revolution: Transforming market research for competitive advantage,” published by Rethink Press (September 16, 2024).
In a data-driven world, you find yourself inundated with information pouring in from a multitude of sources, akin to a bunch of fire hoses turned up to full blast. You understand the importance of using this wealth of data to drive business decisions, whether naming a new product or the price point at which it’s sold.
You also know that data must reach the right people at the right time and that, depending on your company culture and setup, decision-makers should have the autonomy to generate their own research so that they have timely insights precisely when they need them.
How can you attain this ideal scenario? How do you corral all those data streams
and harness their potential for you and anyone else who could benefit from them? In addition, how do you ensure that past market research data is as accessible as the most recent project you commissioned?
The answer is that you need a platform: an architectural framework powered by technology that consolidates and organizes data, enabling people to analyze and learn from it in an agile way. This platform must be as simple, flexible and efficient as possible.
To develop such a platform, you first need to map out a meticulous process that will define a set of design criteria for it. Designing one that will cater to everyone’s needs means understanding:
- where the data comes from,
- who should take responsibility for it,
- who should have access to it (along with how and when),
- why they require it, and
- how they intend to use it.
While you’re doing that, you also have to take into account the people who’ll be using it, whether they are you and your team in market research or others around the business. These three elements—platform, process and people—are interdependent and, to some extent, overlap.
While it is artificial to split them apart in some ways, it is also important to give each their due.
Let’s see how process, platform and people work in unison. Think of them as a golden triangle representing the three domains that you need to change if you’re to create a new, agile way of doing market research. The process informs the platform’s design, the platform (or tools and technology) makes the process work in real life, and the people use the process and platform to generate business results.
Over time, feedback from users may lead to adjustments to both the process and the platform.
Process
A process is a set of repeatable steps leading to a desired goal. To create your integrated market research process, you must first define the goals you want to support. For example, brand managers might want to know how well their ad concepts are performing or to view their sales volumes for product variants in different regions.
Once you know your goals, you can determine responsibilities, timelines and what journeys the data needs to go on to meet those objectives.
Platform
A platform is the combination of technologies and tools that bring a process to life. Many businesses make the mistake of implementing flashy technology without having a sound process in place. However, the best approach is to first understand the problem you aim to solve and the goals you want to achieve, and then design a platform that aligns with them.
People
It’s people who will execute the tasks within your process and use your platform. They could be market research personnel responsible for creating the templates and frameworks to generate survey data and other reports, or they could be users
around the business, such as marketers and sales teams. Regardless of their role, if they don’t know how to use the platform, they won’t gain the right data from it to inform their decisions. This will mean training and supporting them until they feel confident enough to get the best out of it.
It also will require winning their buy-in at the outset; otherwise, you’ll see slow adoption and suboptimal usage.
Putting it all together
For a consumer insights infrastructure to function effectively, all three elements must work harmoniously, just like a stable, three-legged stool. If any leg is shorter than the others, the stool will fall over. Without a tightly defined process, the platform that’s based on it won’t be aligned correctly and people won’t work efficiently. This could lead them to lose faith in the platform and revert to their old ways.
Conversely, a great process without an equally great platform won’t translate into real-life effectiveness. If people don’t know how to use the platform properly or feel negatively toward it, your company won’t gain a return on its investment in the technology, and everyone will lose out.
The key to success is finding the right balance between these three critical areas.
Read More: The 3 points needed for “golden triangle” of market research