Resources | FlexMR

Balancing Quality and Efficiency with Research Live

Written by Emily James | 06 August

As most insight experts are aware, efficiency has been a core objective for market research teams throughout all industries and sectors for a while now. There has been an ever-increasing pressure for insight experts everywhere to generate valuable insights at the speed of business to make sure that those insights can be as impactful as possible and are more likely used to greater effect in stakeholder decision-making processes.

In this article for Research Live, FlexMR Content Manager Emily James explores how the need for speed and efficiency can be balanced alongside the need for quality. Throughout the piece, she advocates for more streamlined workflows, better communication and a structured approach to insight activation.

Workflows, Communication and Activation

Here are three snippets from the article, in which Emily showcases a practical approach to overcoming commercial challenges that often hinder research teams. Each is inspired by the way we collaborate with clients and the creative solutions our teams have devised in the past:

"The workflows that agency-side researchers don’t have direct control over are those on the side of stakeholders, those are typically communication and decision-making workflows. However, for in-house insight teams, using organisational psychology, we can learn to understand the barriers to stakeholder engagement in market research, as well as any extraneous or non-efficient processes that are hindering the flow of insights around an organisation. Submitting this information to stakeholders to help them understand the changes needed will help build a bridge between stakeholders and insight experts, and establish a closer more meaningful relationship as well as line of communication."

"Internal communication between insight experts is always essential, and there should be direct communication between everyone to ensure quality research (proofreading, double checking, idea generation and problem solving are all daily tasks for researchers). The efficiency side of this comes from everyone using the same communication methods, and multiple methods for different communication purposes."

"Producing quality insights unfortunately does not mean quality decision-making, so educating stakeholders on how to activate insights to the best of their ability is one half of this great plan, the other half is to provide them with the tools to make activating insights as easy as possible."

Want to know more? Read the article in full here.

About Research Live

Research Live is the world's leading source of industry news, opinion, special reports and feature articles for market and social researchers, data analysts and consumer insight professionals. Covering the latest trends and techniques from behavioural economics to big data analytics, as well as hot topics like polling and privacy. The publication is operated by the Market Research Society.