MarketSight Thomson Case Study

 

Background

The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) is a global leader in providing essential electronic workflow solutions to business and professional customers. With 2006 revenues of $6.6 billion and 32,000 employees, Thomson provides value-added information, software tools and applications to professionals in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, scientific research and healthcare.

Thomson Scientific, the division focused on the business and practice of science, provides information-based solutions to academic, corporate, government and R&D professionals. The combination of must-have authoritative content and innovative analysis assists with their customers' discovery, analysis, product development and distribution.

The Market Research group within Thomson Scientific is responsible for designing, executing and analyzing research that drives new product decisions and that measures customer satisfaction levels across product lines. The findings from this research are shared with key strategic decision makers.

 

Challenge

Thomson Scientific conducts a good deal of primary research - much of it quantitative - to drive critical business decisions related to new product introductions, product improvements, product pricing and customer service. These findings are leveraged globally, across all customer segments.

With only a few analysts, and a myriad of research to conduct and analyze, the Market Research group at Thomson Scientific needed a solution that would meet certain key requirements:

• Reduce the amount of time spent on basic analysis


• Increase the number and quality of in-depth, actionable reports issued, thereby informing and driving a greater number of critical business decisions


• Reduce overall costs to increase the efficiency of the group

"Analyzing data to drive key business decisions across customer segments is much of what we do," said Mary Ellen Knapka, Manager, Market Research. "An intuitive and easy-to-use analysis tool that would allow us to spend less time on basic analyses, such as building cross-tabs and creating banner reports, and more time with complex analyses, would be a great asset."

 

Solution

In 2006, Thomson Scientific implemented MarketSight, a web-based research analysis application. Once in place, the group used MarketSight to analyze data from one of their largest projects -- the annual customer tracking study. The study, which uncovers valuable customer insights, tracks a tremendous number of key measures across many customer segments. Given the large amount of data and reports needed, the group often hired outside vendors to create banner reports and run cross-tab analyses.

With MarketSight, many of the time intensive steps are automated and the group can create cross-tabs and run appropriate statistical tests on its own, in real time. And if needed, the group can leverage MarketSight's Append Wizard to merge waves of data from past tracking studies through a series of steps that result in correctly aligned data. By automating much of the process, the group estimates they save nearly $20,000 annually in vendor costs.

In addition to using MarketSight for its customer tracking study, the Market Research group also uses the application when responding to internal research requests. Because MarketSight is designed to allow users to quickly iterate on the analysis, hypotheses can be tested and data can be explored in real-time. This enables the group at Thomson Scientific to respond more quickly to requests with smart, detailed analyses. They no longer need to depend on an outside vendor to run and re-run reports. MarketSight also makes it easy to create charts and export them to either PowerPoint or Excel.

Saving time and money with MarketSight means not only a more efficient, but a more effective Market Research group. The group is now able to spend more time on complex analyses. Because Thomson Scientific markets several information-based products to a wide-variety of professional groups, understanding customer behavior across segments is critical to delivering successful information solutions. MarketSight makes it easy to read this data by automatically highlighting statistically significant results across any number of segments.

The customer service team at MarketSight was able to get the Marketing Intelligence team up and running quickly, so they were able to realize significant value from their investment.

 

Results

With MarketSight in place, the Market Research Group at Thomson Scientific is able to:

• Work efficiently and provide valuable input on key business decisions. By spending significantly less time on basic analyses - in some cases, up to 70% less - the group can focus on more complex analyses that impact business decisions.


• Save money. Automating several basic analyses means less reliance on outside vendors, and an annual estimated savings of $20,000.


• Respond quickly to internal requests. With data that is easy to access and manipulate, reports can be turned around in hours, rather than days.

 

This content was provided by MarketSight LLC. Visit their website at www.marketsight.com.