Research Strategies For Agile Empowerment

With the growing number of requests from stakeholders for faster and more agile research, it appears that more insight teams are grappling with the shrinking amount of time available to do high-quality market research in the insights sector.

We are constantly creating research methodologies and working within the limits imposed by stakeholders as an industry, but there are a few that stand out for really time-constrained teams:

1. Continuous Insight Generation

While this technique necessitates some forethought, once insight teams have established a successful research community or panel that is up and running, they will be able to receive instant insights at the drop of a hat. Continuous insight generation ensures that stakeholders across the organisation have access to a working database of old and new insights in case they need to make a last-minute decision.

It can take a long time at first, especially when trying to get participants into the swing of idea generating and replacing out inactive individuals for more active ones in the correct sample. Of course, a successful community or panel is one that adapts to the type of study necessary, the sample size needed, and the insights gained.

2. Outsource Insight Management

If in-house insight teams don't have the resources, developing and implementing insight creation and activation tactics might be a difficult challenge. The pressure on in-house insight teams can be relieved by outsourcing the hands-on activities to agency insight teams, allowing them to focus on the more critical tasks and conversations.

Agency insight teams work hard to be a great extension of in-house insight teams, enhancing their capabilities and taking over more mundane tasks like platform and research management so that in-house teams and stakeholders can focus on analysing and activating insights to the best of their abilities.

However, the key to maximising the effectiveness of this transaction is to establish the correct collaboration between in-house and agency insight teams. The better the agency and in-house insight teams understand each other, their aims, beliefs, and resources, the more efficiently they can work toward the same goals.

3. Streamline Research Request and Distribution Channels

The time it takes to commission and distribute research is one factor that slows down the research process. When it comes to commissioning market research, many newly created insights teams in organisations that have never conducted research struggle to convince decision-makers that they can help. Most of the time, those more established insight teams are too overloaded to take on new initiatives.

Streamlining the research request channels can assist solve this challenge in each scenario. This involves getting into dialogues, taking a seat at the table in board meetings, and putting oneself out there more frequently for new insight teams to maximise their presence inside the organisation. Then you'll want to make sure your research briefs are simple to understand and that you're giving stakeholders the information they need to get started.

There are a few ways we can speed up the commissioning process for established teams. For starters, educating stakeholders in the basics of research so they can create a quick survey or hold a quick focus group themselves to gather data and relieve insight teams of the burden can help them understand the value of market research and use the data more wisely during the activation stage.

Another option is to enlist the support of insight advocates in order to expand the number of outlets for research discussion and teaching. These Advocates can be a part of dialogues in locations where the insight team has difficulty reaching (e.g. department meetings) and can help liaise with the insight team to get things started. The Advocates can then help share the insights to the rest of the organisation at any time once they've been developed.

4. Creating an Insights Inventory

An insights inventory, sometimes known as the "holy grail of market research," is a location where all insights, data, research initiatives, and objectives are stored for convenient access. The directory serves as a one-stop shop for stakeholders to obtain the answers they require, and if something is missing, research can be conducted to fill in the gaps or expand on existing research.

This, like the continuous insight generation plan, could take some time to develop if insight teams consider everything they've done since the in-house insights team was formed. However, if insight teams began cataloguing everything they do from now on, the database would begin to form with the foundations of research, and time would help us build a directory of research projects, objectives, and resulting insights for stakeholders to browse at any time, anywhere, for any purpose.