What are the best ways to stay within budget and on time during research studies?

Set the objectives, and more importantly explain why these objectives are important - then your very intelligent researchers can understand the real motivation behind the objectives. Estimates of costs and timescales will often be wrong so it's important to be able to intelligently pivot when things don't go according to plan.

A great advice to manage your budget is to invest in research only if you definitely cannot make a decision with out that specific point of data or learning. Therefore imagine how you will decide when you have the research results, set the scenarios and thresholds. What will you do if the outcome is X and what if is Y.

Setting objectives and further more what are you going to do with the results defines, in my experience, the success and impact of any research project. I always advise my clients to start by reviewing what they already know and assess the importance of the knowledge gaps through the lens of how they would use the new findings and insights.

In a commercial research setup, data collection or field work costs contribute to around 80% of the total research costs. Besides selection of the correct research design in line with the objectives of the research, it is also important to emphasize on the quality of the data collection. A good data collection quality helps in fast validation of the collected data, thereby reducing cost by avoiding reworks or need of booster data being collected to support the primary data collection. A good data collection quality can be ensured through continuous training and monitoring of field personnel involved in data collection through data quality checks in place. These help to reduce cost escalation of any project and helps to stay within budgets.

This is quite accurate, but I think this is usually done in most projects. What we need to be extra careful about is when after the kick off of the project, the scope of the project changes. If the project scope changes, but the time line or the budget don't, then this will probably lead into difficulties to stay within budget and deliver within the predefined timelines.

One tip - take the survey yourself as a respondent. You will realise the redundant and ineffecient parts of the survey. Always keep it crisp.

Understand the segments of our target respondents before choosing the right methods. So, with having clear target respondents, it will impact to what the right menthods that we would like to use and need to compare with budget that we have

When trying to utilise a budget in the most effective way, be open to new ways of conducting research. Traditional survey-based research is great but depending on what you are trying to answer there are now alternatives to it. For example, if you are trying to understand brand awareness and the remaining funnel. You can use how many searches a brand has relative to their competitors (Share of Search) as a metric for this. It has a strong correlation to sales and market share movements and is very affordable. Once that is established surveys can be added to understand specific questions and qualitative questions.

Focus on Primary and secondary data depending on what product is analysed. In between movement values need not be analysed much.

Clear communication is a continuous process, not a one-off event. And remember that your team and stakeholders are human beings, have emotions, and there will almost certainly be miscommunications in all directions!

Who ever does the market research , spend less time , ask min four or five relevant queries , understand the competitive product movement and then analyse.

Many things can go wrong. Plan for the unexpected. Read your questionnaire, test it for logic and then test it again from a respondent's perspective. How do feel taking the survey? Soft launch your project: specs are rarely accurate. Adjust as needed. Communicate any changes needed.

Leverage technology. Our research methods need to adapt with the evolving consumer. Weigh between information, time, cost and make fast decisions.

One benefit of working with agency is always the past experiences which is used to bring up efficiency and bring down the costs. However the turn point is whether team decides to take learnings from this or simply imitate the method.

One thing I've found helpful is having a post project 'hearts and ladders' debrief with the team. We discuss challenges we faced and solutions we discovered. I would ask the team reflect on: -What went well -What could have been improved? - What lessons did we learn? -What are some recommendations for future projects? -Is there anything we'd do differently? Then I suggest documenting the outcome, sharing it back to the project and wider team and mist importantly taking any action needed

Check in with the end user of the research. Whether it's internal stakeholders, or external clients, find out how the research was used. What insights lead to actionable change and started productive conversations? Think about budget and time relative to the end user, did the time and money of that extra xyz payoff in the end?

Indeed! In the fast paced world of market research, it is very easy to jump into the next project, without first taking the time to evaluate and extract some learnings both for the project team, but also for the organization as a whole

I attended many sessions on how to publish research papers; read many articles that were already published. These backgrounds helped me in developing a scientific approach for writing manuscripts, which were acceptable to international communities to a large extent. The approach taken by me was building a story. In a story, we show the audience why we decided to write this story (prologue/introduction), then we tell them what we know about the characters (background), then we talk about different characters and characterize them (developing a theoritical framework from literature review), then talk to different stakeholders and their views (Methods for data collection), create a doubt among the readers (analysis) and epilogue (conclusion).

A strategic approach is to bring in experts who can take the lead on a project, akin to a lead author working with co-authors on a research paper. This method not only harnesses specialized expertise but also significantly reduces the time and resources required, leading to substantial cost savings. By optimizing resource allocation and minimizing inefficiencies, this approach enhances both the quality and economic efficiency of the project.

A lot of our audience is not research savvy or might get confused by too many numbers, too many quotes. Try to simplify the story and show only what is needed to validate it. Most clients prefer a short deck with "need to know" information. All the "good to know" can be appendix.