Do Less With Less

It is a well known phrase, in marketing research and other industries: Do More with Less.  But can you really do more with less, or does this lead to:  Garbage In Garbage Out?


At the recent American Marketing Association Research & Strategy Summit, the question was posed to a group of CEO's from leading research firms:  "How do you do more with less?"

Their answers provide some concrete ways to stretch your research dollars and still gain the valued insights that your company needs.

• You are paying for people.  Remember that a research firm's greatest cost is in its people. Although there are certainly efficiencies in process and technology that firms achieve, inevitably, what you are paying for is the quality of the team working for you. Although you may pay more for a single research project, you also are likely to get better insights that will pay you back down the road.
• Rewrite that RFP. Involve your research partners as early in the process as possible. Instead of taking a procurement perspective (get the RFP out to as many firms as you can, to get the best price), involve a few trusted partners to work with you to ensure that you have designed research that precisely gets to the business issues at hand.
• Synthesize your research. In the past there has been a trend to naming your research problem, and then doing a project (e.g., the branding study, the pricing study), resulting in a lot of research that is overlaps other work. By ensuring that all internal researchers have access and awareness of all recent and planned research, you can design a research program that answers the most questions with less overlap, and less overall spend. 
• Instead of doing more with less, do less with less. Consider if every question that comes your way requires a research project? Can a few smaller issues be combined, or tackled as an add on to another project? Can it be researched via an omnibus? Is the research need strategic?
• Be strategic about your spend. Research departments fund projects with a combination of their own budget and a departmental budget. Follow the lead of Jeff Mercer at Microsoft, who focuses his research dollars on projects that align with the strategic goals of the business units they support, and either defer or don't fund research that doesn't align. 

How market research clients can help their partners "come to the table"

This is the one of an occasional series of posts that focuses on strategic marketing.  Market researchers who are valued partners "at the table" are increasingly turning to their marketer skill set. 


I recently attended the AMA 2011 Research & Strategy Summit, and was reflecting on lessons learned from one year ago. One of my highlights was a breakout session entitled "How to Be A Bold Researcher", by Gayle Lloyd of Batesville Caskets.  This was wonderfully excerpted by @lennyism at GreenBook (http://www.greenbookblog.org/2010/09/28/a-few-quick-notes-on-the-ama-mrc/).

"Researchers of the future will need to be savvy business people first and researchers second.  The mantra “think like a business person act like a purveyor of information” will be the key to getting a seat at the table and keeping that seat. The skills to be a good researcher go way beyond data analysis. The researcher of the future will need to be a strategic and creative thinker, knowledge management guru, confident and most of all fearless and willing to go where no researcher has gone before and that’s just for starters."

One of the ways that Gayle integrates the research conducted at Batesville is through a twice-annual research summary. This step, built into the planning cycle, ensures that common threads and themes emerging across the research team are uncovered and synthesized. Importantly, these summaries are also shared with trusted research vendor partners.    More organizations should consider bringing their research partners into the planning, review and synthesis cycles.  Often researchers are selected for their niche expertise (whether this be expertise in certain types of research, geographic coverage, or other purpose), but may be one of several researchers actively working with a client organization. By ensuring that your researchers have "the big picture" you can also ensure that your researchers provide the strongest, most strategic insights possible.