Standardisation and automation of the research process

This is a chapter of our survival guide for market researchers. You may?download →?and read the full version of the guide right away or continue reading it week by week.

Previous chapters:

• Introduction →?Why 90% of product decisions are made without validating them with real people.
• Efficient sorting of research requests (Triage) → How to build a system for prioritising research requests in such a way as to maximise the percentage of business decisions backed with some consumer insight.

Standardisation

It goes without saying that typical tasks are solved in a standardised way. Below is a list of tasks which we will consider standard. As expected, these are all kinds of testing tasks.

Next, it is essential to decide what exactly should be standardised within each task. These elements are necessary and sufficient:

• Type of stimulus material.
• A set of KPIs, wording and sequence of questions.
• Sample size.
• Type of report.
• Decision-making / action standards.

It also makes sense to compile a list of standard target audiences. This will ensure the comparability between the tests and allow you to build up a norms (benchmarks) database.

As a result, we have a fixed list of standard tasks. For each standard task, we have a fixed research protocol.

If you really want to maximise the percentage of decisions that are based on research data, there should be no flexibility in the standard tasks. This is what will reduce the involvement of the researcher to a minimum and increase the capacity of the research department to a maximum.

The key at this stage is that you shouldn’t have to think about a standard task:

• Its input is clear.
• Its output is clear.
• It's clear how to do it.
• It is clear how to use the results and how to make a decision.

Automation

Standard research protocols are easy to automate. No matter what technical solution you use, the result should be something like this:

• Easy selection of a task from a fixed list.
• Simple project launch (load stimuli, select target audience).
• Fully automated data collection.
• Fully automated data processing.
• Fully automated report preparation.

The key point at this stage is to minimise manual work. Ideally, the project launch should take 5 minutes, and the rest of the process, up to the finilised report, should not require human participation at all.

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Where do our metrics come from?

Our questionnaires may look simple and easy to use but actually are rooted in the knowledge and experience of some industry 'heavy lifters' as well as our own. Find out how our metrics were created →

Research ROI. How to prove it adds value

The likelihood that?in?the process of?research you will find "insight?in?a?million" and open a?new market is?small.?In?a?competitive market ("red ocean"), research is?an?optimization tool. And it’s an?important tool.?Let us illustrate with an?aviation example...

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