Cambiar Consulting

The Winds of Change – The Future of Staffing

by Ian Lewis and Lock Collins, Cambiar Partners

Now Hiring Management Consultants

The future of client market research departments lies with management consultants, polymaths* and specialists. Management consultants will lead client market research (MR) departments, satisfying C-suite demands for MR that ‘gets the business’, is effective with senior management, is future-focused and is a driver of innovation and growth. Polymaths will have the conceptual thinking ability and agility to integrate and leverage the myriad sources of information (what Simon Chadwick referred to as the New Modalities and the River in his Nov 21 “The Winds of Change” blog), identifying insights that give competitive advantage. Specialists will bring deep analytic capabilities and knowledge that unlocks fresh insights for polymaths to leverage.

Why do we say this?  And what does is mean for staffing of the future, in client market research departments and in research companies?

Three major forces are driving change in future staffing needs, and market research is rapidly approaching what Andy Grove of Intel called a “strategic inflection point” in his famous book Only the Paranoid Survive.

Force 1:  Senior management in client companies is demanding that MR moves from being an operation that largely does validation and tactical research to one that is a strategic partner in driving innovation and growth.

Force 2:  A river of information beyond traditional market research data is rapidly coming on stream (e.g. social media, web analytics, and location-based data); information synthesis and knowledge management will become critical to the survival of MR departments, and will offer huge opportunity for innovative research companies.

Force 3:  There has never before been a time of so much innovation in MR tools.  There’s neuroscience, biometrics, eye-tracking, social media analytics, online ethnographies, virtual shopping, “digividuals”, and more.

Force 1 drives the need for people with management consulting skills, and for polymaths (think Leonardo da Vinci and Theodore Roosevelt).  Force 2 drives the need for polymaths and analytical specialists.  Force 3 drives the need for a wide range of specialists.  The vast majority of specialists will work for research companies.

Take heed of the winds of change, and take these three steps now.  1) Evaluate your structure and staff against the new needs, 2) Design a training program that addresses key capability gaps, and 3) Restructure as needed, and hire to fill gaps that cannot be filled with training.

*A polymath (Greek: polymaths, “having learned much” is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. [Source: Wikipedia]

Connect with Ian Lewis or Lock Collins

by Monica Wood, Cambiar Partner

In the world of Market Research often times the function and its deliverables are thought of as a cost center. This is an obvious problem for the industry, as the Market Research function is in the business of value creation.  As we continue to want organizations to see us as strategic business and thought partners, budgets get slashed and headcount cut. So how do we be strategic thought partners in times of cost cutting?

I have some thoughts on the subject as this is something I was constantly challenged with while at Novartis and other large companies where I ran the Market Research function.

• First, prioritize all work. I highly recommend this be done and aligned at the very top, as frequently as monthly, since priorities are always changing. Next, outsource low value-added work. This is where outsourcing to India can play a great role.
• Second, make your Procurement Department your best friend. The more procurement understands that all market research is not created equal, the more likely they will be to accommodate the Market Research function’s need to add value and help drive the business.
• Third, create “smart approaches” to get to insights more cost effectively. Online communities and other social media tools can be used to get early insights at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods of focus groups and the like.

Last, forgive my reframing this great line, but the strongest defense is a strong offense. I suggest you demonstrate and market the value the function has created frequently and to whomever is willing to listen. Often times the Finance department can become your biggest champion if they understand the risk the company is avoiding by using appropriate new product screening approaches, as just one example. The more functions in the organization and the more individual champions for the function you have, the more likely the function will move from being perceived as a cost center to a value creation center.

Have you been challenged with doing more with less? What are your thoughts on how to keep the monies and resources flowing?

Contact Monica at monica@consultcambiar.com.

by Simon Chadwick, Partner

Those of us trained in market research thirty years ago entered a world that was stable, established and trusted. We were taught probability theory, sampling, questionnaire design, analysis frameworks and report writing. If we were lucky, we also received training in qualitative methods and content analysis. For us, excitement came in the form of new methodologies (conjoint analysis, volumetrics and brand personality), but the basic format of research itself did not change.

Today, we live in a very different world – an exciting world where the status quo is being challenged every day, even down to the bedrock of what research actually is. Some of this is internally driven – researchers challenging themselves to come up with new and different ways of collecting, analyzing and communicating information and insight. But, truth be told, most of it is externally driven – new types of companies entering our field, new technologies, new media. But, most of all, it is client-driven. Our industry changes fastest and most fundamentally when the needs of our clients change. As we enter the second decade of the 21^st century, those needs are changing dramatically and rapidly.

We are facing the five winds of change.

In the coming weeks, I and my colleagues will examine each of these winds and speculate as to what they mean for the profession and industry that we grew up in and came to love. What are these winds? Here’s a quick summary:

1. Doing More With Less – You might think that this is nothing new, but it is. And with a vengeance. Clients today are being pressured to be more strategic, more proactive, more impactful just as the resources that they have at their disposal are bring cut to the bone. Think of the automotive company that used to have 165 researchers and now only has 8 – and yet those 8 researchers were instrumental to their company’s survival. How do they do it? What does it mean for how they structure their work? And what does it mean for their supplier relationships?
2. Do-It-Yourself Research – Long derided, the self-serve research software packages that the research industry loves to hate are now becoming mainstream. When SurveyMonkey can raise $100 million in financing, you know something is afoot. What are they being used for? Who is using them? And why? Added to which, the very definition of DIY research is changing. Five years ago, nobody had heard of proprietary panels and market research online communities (MROC). Now they are ubiquitous and an entire industry has built up to provide them. How does that affect how we view what research is? And how do they fit into the rhythm of clients’ research needs?
3. New Modalities – Once there was the survey and the focus group. OK, that’s an oversimplification, but you know what I mean. Today, we have new modalities (or methodologies) springing up all over the place – neurosciences, biometrics, online ethnography, crowd sourcing, predictive markets, web analytics. Even research robots on Twitter. How does this affect how we view “research”? How are clients fitting these new modalities into their overall research ecosystems? What is being replaced and what is incremental?
4. The River – No, this does not refer to river sampling. This is the concept of a mighty river of information that surrounds us daily, with thousands of tributaries, swirling around us on the Internet and in social media. If we can learn how scientifically to fish in this river, maybe the insights that we need are instantaneously at hand. How does that affect traditional research? Does the survey lose its primacy as the first way to plumb consumer sentiment and information? Does it move down the food chain into more of an instrument of clarification when we don’t understand what the river is telling us? What does that mean for the industry’s portfolio of techniques? Indeed, what does it mean for the very definition of “market research”?
5. Pay For Performance – Or, to put it more gently, “Value-Based Compensation”. Coca Cola has announced publicly that it is moving to payment to research agencies based on performance – or value generated. The advertising industry had to accept this ten years ago. Is it now the turn of research? And how will performance (or value) be measured? Is this an opportunity or a threat?

Join us in the coming weeks as we investigate each of these five winds. We promise you a journey that will be fascinating, challenging…sometimes scary and yet optimistic.