18 April 2017

Automate your research partner roster to choose the best agency, every time

In an ideal world, time at work in an Insight team should be mostly spent uncovering fresh insights and building knowledge, by analyzing consumer and market data to dig beyond the obvious for actionable recommendations. Ultimately, you want to enable your business partners to make winning decisions which are rooted in your company’s knowledge.

Of course, a big part of your daily work is also about planning and organizing new research. This includes collecting inputs to write the brief, complete with clear business questions. Also, it’s thinking about the best approach to get the job done, and choosing the right research partner with the competencies that suit the study:

• Experts in your envisioned methodology – or someone you trust to propose useful recommendations to improve the approach and ensure answers to the business questions
• A track record delivering high-quality results to deadline and budget
• The ability to listen and respond to your specific needs with the flexibility to adapt if business needs take a slight shift
• Experience with your company’s ways of working
• And last but not least, reasonable pricing, in line with procurement’s expectations and negotiated contracts

Meeting all these requirements and being on top of your company’s procurement research partner roster can be time-consuming and complex. You go off to check with several colleagues who have experience with similar projects and who might refer you to a good agency.

Then, you look up all necessary paperwork, fill it out, and run after official approvals from procurement and business leads. Obviously, these are lost hours we could all do without. This is where research automation comes into play: by simplifying the process of quickly selecting the most qualified partner at the most favourable price, without compromising on quality.

At Market Logic, clients use research automation to centrally manage their research partner rosters so insights managers get great support along with these key automative steps:

• Proposing potential partners from key inputs in the briefing, i.e. chosen type of project and/or methodology, and research market(s)
• Ranking research agencies against your pre-defined criteria
• Consolidating all the supporting documentation to raise a PO
• Only showing those research partners that take your company’s procurement specific contracts into account. So, you don’t need to wait for an off-roster approval

Do you want to learn more about how to choose the best research agency for a project with a mouse click? Let’s talk!