Retool Research Processes to Maintain Organizational Influence

Management teams "that are able to quickly assess the competitive landscape and make good quality decisions in a timely fashion will provide their organizations with the best chance to succeed" write Clark and Collins in their seminal paper, "Strategic Decision Making in High Velocity Environments." 

Our current economic environment continues to be one of the fastest-changing consumer landscapes of all time. In recent years, we've seen a rapid wave of de-globalization, supply chain issues, and economic whiplash that have challenged many organizations. This rate of change will continue. Under these conditions, rapid decision making is mission-critical, and for researchers to maintain influence on business decisions, they need to retool and reframe how insights are delivered in their organizations.

The latest wave of the GRIT Report reveals that for three years, research departments reversed a trend of suppliers engaging directly with stakeholder audiences (like marketing, product, and executives) for primary market research activities, but they're increasingly losing influence over analytics acquisition, which is increasingly controlled directly by these same stakeholders. Why? 

First, let's define the job-to-be-done (JTBD) for research, data, and analytics. While we can doubtlessly generate multiple JTBD definitions, a reasonable definition for the JTBD of insights is: "Insights are hired by businesses to enable them to make confident decisions at a given time and cost." All things considered, decreased time and cost tend to be better.

Primary market research and analytics are often complements to each other, but they can also become substitutes. In general, they tend to be used in complementary fashion. However, analytics can often provide faster insights to support decision- making compared to conducting primary research. With today's pace of change, decision- makers increasingly need answers immediately. Analytics providers have recognized this shift and now offer self-serve dashboards, real-time data feeds, and automated alerts. 

To maintain influence over analytics acquisition, research groups need to reframe their value proposition around speed to insight. This requires identifying unnecessary lags in current research processes and developing new ways of working that align with decision makers' need for rapid answers. Some examples could include:

• Streamlining research review and approval processes to get studies launched faster

• Using agile approaches to iterate on research design quickly

• Leveraging existing syndicated and secondary data sources more frequently 

• Interpreting analytics data and providing context vs. conducting lengthy primary research

The point is not that primary research lacks value. But research groups need to recognize that their internal clients now equate insights with speed. Meeting this increased expectation for pace and immediacy is essential to maintaining influence over analytics sourcing. By focusing on how they can provide answers quickly, researchers can solidify their role as a strategic advisor amidst growing analytics usage across the organization.

In summary, retaining influence requires embracing insights as a rapid decision support function. Making this mental shift and aligning research operations accordingly is key to maintaining leadership across all organizational analytics initiatives.