Researchers Research but They don’t Follow Up
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Mar 11, 2010
Reineke Reitsma, an industry analyst with Forrester, has published a new independent report, "Information Management for Market Researchers". In a recent blog post about it, she shared some key insights from her research:
The most important outcome from my interviews with market researchers and knowledge managers is that a culture of sharing creates better products and helps companies be more successful innovators. Simply said: to innovate, knowledge from various departments needs to come together, irrespective of role or rank.
Because Market Researchers both generate and manage many data sources, they are in theory in a good position to introduce knowledge management to the organization. They can do this at multiple levels, from restructuring their own market research department, including the way they share research with the organization, to introducing a company wide knowledge management platform. The role market research can play in practice depends on the culture of the organization, the influence the market research department has, and the maturity of the research department.
According to Reineke's research, only 46% of the 56 market research leaders interviewed share their results widely.
This research certainly hit home to me. When I first started my career, one of the senior consultants, Lori Underhill, was doing research for a regional telephone company. In the course of her research, Lori discovered that a separate division had already thoroughly studied the issue; she arranged a meeting with her client and the coworker who had commissioned the previous research for them to share findings. As a result, the project was done much sooner and under budget -- a win for everybody!
Sadly, such disconnects happen in far too many organizations. In our own study of CE IQ best practices, doing primary research had the lowest positive correlation (0.33) to customer loyalty of the 24 practices we studied. As a researcher, this shames me, but I believe it is because too often the research is commissioned but not distributed and disseminated. In fact, supporting this, the practice of sharing Voice of the Customer feedback across organization boundaries had a much higher positive correlation (0.52) to customer loyalty.
Researchers, you did the hard work. You now have interesting data and insights in hand. Follow up after your presentation to the client. Offer to present the results around the organization! You will be surprised at how many people want to learn from you.