Elevating the Researcher Experience: It’s Time to Fix the Failings and Foster Success

The market research industry is constantly evolving, presenting unique challenges to insights professionals. But according to Greenbook's 2023 GRIT Business and Innovation Report, the findings point to market research partners exacerbating some of these challenges. Of the "Unmet Needs" uncovered in the report, the biggest deficiency is that market research partners seem to fall short in effectively addressing researchers’ needs. In fact, in many instances, we may even be the cause of researchers’ biggest pain points. It's time to heed the call and fix what prevents a better researcher experience.

Unmet Needs: Where Are Research Partners Falling Short?

When it comes to the unmet needs of insights professionals, two distinct types of support emerge. The first is the requirement to stay abreast of broader industry trends, including new methods, data types, and analytic techniques. Researchers must constantly adapt to remain fresh and competitive in the evolving MR landscape.

The second type of support is more tactical and revolves around transforming data into actionable insights with real impact. Insights teams often lack the necessary capacity and skills to make their work truly valuable for businesses. Furthermore, they struggle to keep up with the ever-changing methodology and tech trends, and the task of extracting actionable insights from large data sets poses a significant challenge.

To overcome these shortcomings and elevate the researchers’ experience, collaboration between market research partners/suppliers and corporate researchers is crucial and requires transformation and change management for success.

Fostering Success Through Transformation and Change Management

As the industry undergoes transformation, partners must take a leading role in successfully managing researchers through change. This applies not only to supporting the research process itself but also to assisting corporate buyers in adopting new technologies and methodologies to stay competitive. Some examples for how to foster successful change, include:

Run Quarterly Training: Set up training sessions to empower teams to embrace new technology or methodologies. Additionally, collaborating with corporate buyers to facilitate meetings with other groups who rely on these research insights can foster a more integrated approach. By understanding your clients' propensity for change, you can actively facilitate their transition, helping them define a vision for their teams and optimizing resource allocation. 

Show Empathy and Build Partnerships: Go beyond surface-level interactions and deeply understand the needs of your corporate clients. By becoming an extension of the organization, partners can foster a strong and cohesive collaborative relationship. Align research objectives with corporate goals, tailor solutions to specific needs, and collaborate closely throughout the research process. Dive into their quarterly reports to grasp their financial performance, analyze how they incentivize their employees, and study their organizational structures.

Keep Up with Industry Trends: Be your researchers’ wingperson by staying abreast of the latest methodologies and tech trends in the industry. From running regular business reviews to providing insights professionals with industry updates and educating them on emerging tools and technologies, it’s our job to equip researchers with the knowledge and resources they need to stay competitive and deliver for their clients. 

It’s time to close the gap on the needs of insights professionals and researchers. There will be winners and losers in this quest to deliver a better researcher experience. Those who don’t invest in leading researchers through this transformation will find themselves extinct in the future. It’s time to be what corporate researchers need us to be—an extension of their shop. Failure to do so will leave us struggling to exist in the future market.