What are the Trends in Market Intelligence according to Frank Geers?
How Market Intelligent is Your Company?
What are the most important challenges on the Market Intelligence front in your view?
- Market Intelligence currently remains far too much on the sidelines. The big challenge is to make MI an essential part of an organisation and therefore an important part of the company DNA. In this way MI gets the best feel for the dynamics of the company.Currently, market research can still too often be treated reactively. That means that research questions can sometimes be too isolated. There’s a problem, so what now?More integration in the company has two advantages: relevant research can be enforced internally and action can be taken more proactively.
- A second challenge in my opinion is to let Market Intelligence become a constant. Market Intelligence should protect knowledge over time.It should show what already exists, what is still needed. A Market Intelligence department should position itself as a dynamic and stable centre of knowledge. Certainly in companies with a high staff turnover where much knowledge can be lost.
What could you advise so as to gain such credibility? Certainly with top management?
We shouldn’t be too black and white about it. I have also worked in companies where there is a strong buy in from the top management.
If progress is needed, I can make a few recommendations:
- Share knowledge more proactively. A MI department needs to be a critical sounding board. A really pragmatic solution can be to circulate your own newsletter within the company.
Ideally knowledge is shared in a creative and pleasant way. For example, do a poll on the intranet to see to what extent marketing is up to date with certain information. - Do an active follow up of your own research. Market Intelligence should actively approach the internal customer after a study to ask if the research contributed to the expected goals.MI should be more critical of their own results: eg. do we also see a reflection of the purchase intention identified in research in reality… recommendations regarding packaging improvement, do they really work?…
Should Market Intelligence people have training or a background in marketing, in your view?
Market Intelligence people in my opinion don’t need to be real full-blooded marketeers. Above all they need to be capable of translating a marketing question correctly into research.
Knowledge of research techniques is therefore essential and marketing knowledge does not suffice.
For reporting MI needs to be capable of expressing conclusions from market research in marketing lingo. So knowledge of certain marketing terms and concepts is certainly useful.
Of course, the role of the external market research agency is also crucial, if market research is outsourced.
In your experience, are sufficient tools used in Market Intelligence? What are good tools, in your view?
I believe that all small communication tools that help to spread the news are very important. Whether it’s a poster in the lift, a newsletter, a pop-up on the intranet,…
Every MI person’s dream is to be able to create a dashboard which can be accessed by all internal customers at any time.
This dashboard is fed with important data, available research, planned research, templates. It’s a place to communicate with each other, make requests,…
However, you see this seldom, or never, and in any case far too little. Sometimes an external market research agency partly takes this role under their wing.
Do people do enough with the results obtained from market research? Or are they filed away too often, in your view?
Despite the cost of research it is sometimes scary how little is really done with the insights. People listen and learn, but do not always transform the learnings into a real action plan.
It is already much better than it used to be. Fortunately there is hardly ever research for the sake of research.
In my opinion far more could be done with research. It often ends with the presentation of the results.
I have already noticed in the past that clients react surprised if my research refers to research carried out for example a couple of years previously. That shows that people often don’t think about it or refer to it any more.
Of course it is also the role of MI to actively follow up what happens with the results.
What is your assessment in general, or what are your experiences with the place that MI departments are given in organisations?
These days you come across three situations:
- MI as a department on its own.
- MI as an annex of the marketing department.
- MI as a division of the business intelligence department. This department is sometimes separate from and sometimes part of the marketing department.
Personally I strongly believe in structures where market intelligence works as an independent specific department allowing you to have (or build) a very strong concentration of expertise. Here and there you do see a trend in this direction.
What are the trends in MI, in your view?
- It’s nothing new, but trying to carry out good research with forever decreasing budgets remains an ongoing trend (for example working internationally without travel).
- One very subtle trend I have noticed is that Market Intelligence departments are beginning to position themselves as centres of knowledge and/or expertise.
- One really big challenge is to come with quick and responsive research. Increasingly fewer companies have a company vision focussed on eg. the coming 5 years. Companies think in terms of years and sometimes even in terms of quarters. Fast and flexible data collection, research,… that’s a must for the future.
- Big companies are shying away from local MIU units. Everything is becoming concentrated in one place/one country or the MI people are physically spread over different countries. The person requesting research has less and less personal affinity with the market to be researched.
- Lastly is a trend I can see in myself and in my experience with customers. Very big companies are increasingly open to working with small flexible units instead of big market research agencies. Small teams are interesting because they are very adaptable.
What do you think about working together with external firms for market intelligence assignments?
I can only speak for myself here. In general these days I have a good feeling about how the collaboration is going.
Compared to the past there is far more mutual understanding, more pragmatic reflection within the team and enough connection with reality.
There used to be far more hierarchy whereas now it’s more about constructive partnerships. We can talk about professional trust and respect.
Can you measure the Return on Investment of Market Intelligence? If so, how?
It’s not easy, but you can measure it. How do you assess the financial value of research? It’s not an exact science.
The ROI tends to be measured more in soft than hard facts. For example, it can be that, without research, your new product launch or campaign for example will be a flop…
However, there is also the chance of your product launch going well without research beforehand. The KPIs used for that can be very varied, and very factual: compare the research results with the reality afterwards.
If research showed for example that a certain number of consumers would buy at a certain price, compare these results with the reality afterwards. Then we can talk about a value expressed as a confidence level.
In other words, MI gives the organisation tools to take on calculated risks and challenges. MI can (in man hours) help the marketing FTEs to work more efficiently/to focus on the essence of their job.
MI can allow cost savings to be made by reusing data, approaching data in other ways or combining data creatively,…
