Denyse Drummond-Dunn - C3 Centricity Archives - GRBN.ORG

Measuring ROI: Enabling Insights to be the foundation of customer centricity

GRBN_News — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 07:04:34 +0000

Everyone talks about customer centricity and how important it is to put the customer at the heart of business. However few organizations are walking their talk. I think the reason is because while they understand the importance of deeply engaging their customers, most companies don’t know how to do it. Insights are the very foundation of customer centricity. They form the basis of needed changes, whether in company structure and vision, brand positioning and innovation, or new processes built around the customer.

Insights as the motor of a customer first strategy

As with customer centricity, most businesses also talk about the importance of insights and try to develop them, but again far fewer than you imagine are actually successful. So what can we do to help generate insights as the basis of our adoption of a customer first strategy? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Understand the category in which you are really competing. Not the industry definition but the customer grouping of the brands, and the identification of those with which you are competing.
Convert your business objective into a customer aim. Understand the changes you are looking to make in your customers’ attitudes or behaviours. Your information gathering will be far more focussed and actionable.
Understand your target customers as deeply as possible. Not just who they are, but what they do, where they do it and most importantly of all, why. One of the easiest ways to do this is by getting intimate with them. Walk with them, talk with them, live their lives alongside them and identify their needs, desires and pain points.

Once you have taken these first steps, you will be ready to complete the insight development process. Basing it on a human truth will ensure it resonates with your customers and has the added benefit of its relevance cutting across geographies too.

ROI as the basis for more resources

However, insight development and then building brands and actions based upon them, will require additional resources:

Skills: Even today, insight development is still usually left to the market research department alone, but it takes additional skills. Customer information comes from many sources besides market research data. While analytical skills are essential, synthesis, storytelling and knowledge sharing are also required.
Personnel: Since insight comes from the integration of information from multiple sources, more resources will be needed than most companies assign to market research.
Budget: There is a mass of information about the customer available within most organizations, but it usually requires additional analysis and categorisation. As you review it all, ask yourself: What is useful and what is just nice to have? What is relevant to the question in hand and what isn’t? You can’t make use of everything every time, so these are vital questions to ask before you attack the mountain of data available to you.

OK, you might be thinking, but how do I obtain all these added resources? You and your team are already stretched. The answer’s simple. By better meeting the business’s demands and needs, and demonstrating a positive ROI of insights. In order to do this, you need to be more business savvy and be of value to the decision-takers. And this you can’t do by sitting in your office, behind your computer! So get out and share your knowledge. Surprise your management with a deeper understanding of the business, the market, and the customer. After all, no-one knows them better! Denyse Drummond-Dunn Global Speaker, Strategist & Change Catalyst, Helping Companies Grow more PROFITABLY Through Deeper Customer Engagement C3Centricity

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How Insights Can Be The Engine Of A Customer-First Strategy

GRBN_News — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 08:35:12 +0000

A friend of mine asked a great question recently. It was this: “You are always saying that market research and insight teams have a great opportunity to lead the customer-first initiative. But how? We’ve already got too much work and anyway people don’t listen to us.” I laughed, because he had brilliantly summed up the advantages of a customer-first strategy for all of us, whether on the client supplier side. Let me explain.

What a customer-first strategy is

A customer-first strategy in its simplest form means making the customer a priority in an organization. Easy to say, I know, but quite hard to do. In reality it involves thinking customer first in everything you do. I suggest to my clients to always ask the “magic question” take a decision. It is “What would our customers think of the decision we have just taken?” If they wouldn’t like it, then it should be reconsidered.

How market research & insight can lead the initiative

Customer centricity is a journey not a destination. It is founded on a deep understanding of the customer. Who best, therefore, to lead the initiative than market research & insight? Whether an organization is looking to update its vision and strategy, reposition it brands and innovate better, or improve its communications for increased engagement, the company needs to understand the customer.

A unique opportunity not to be missed

According to the latest ESOMAR research, the market research industry is flat if not already declining. I believe there are a number of reasons for this. Businesses no longer rely on market research alone to gather data about the market and its customers. Information is now flowing into organisations from multiple sources, like never before. Also when the going gets tough, market research budgets are amongst the first to be cut. This suggests that the work is not seen as of sufficient value. A customer-first strategy relies on insight at its very foundation, so who better to lead the initiative? However, this means that we need to get out from behind our desks and earn three new skills:

Socialise. Most market researchers are happier sitting behind their desks than talking to people. Invite colleagues to lunch and share your latest findings or ideas. Become the sort of person others want to “pick the brains” for brainstorming and solutions.
Synthesise. Stop telling everything we know and start sharing short, precise knowledge that answers business needs and challenges.
Surprise. It’s time to share all the information we have, which rarely gets communicated outside of project results reporting. What a waste!

The flood of data flowing into organisations will forever increase, as long as smart chips are being integrated into everything. If we don’t stand up and claim our expertise in analysis and customer understanding, someone else will. The clock is ticking! Denyse Drummond-Dunn Founder, President and Chief Catalyst C3Centricity

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Making Data Smarter: Bigger Can Take Care of Itself!

GRBN_News — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 13:35:57 +0000

By Denyse Drummond-Dunn, C3Centricity. In 2007 the MREB ran a study to understand why some MR departments were rated better than others. They concluded that the two major areas in which MR provides value to business are the new learnings from conducting projects and the accumulation of knowledge over time. They also identified three stages in the development of MR departments to achieving true value and information ROI:

Methodological experts, data collection and provision to business with just an explanation of findings.
Insight generators where researchers act as consultants, interpreting the “so what” and supporting decision-making.
Synthesizers and socializers, actively participating in day-to-day business decisions, by not only facilitating insight generation, but also by synthesizing knowledge from multiple sources.

They discovered that most MR departments sit in the first two stages, and yet it is the third stage that brings most value to business. In the last eight years, I don’t think much has changed, do you?! A second study shows that top management complains they can’t find the information they want when they need it, and anyway get emails and spread-sheets, rather than the (mobile) dashboards they would prefer. A third study reported that over two-thirds of CMOs feel unprepared for the current data explosion, especially from social media. They appreciate there’s knowledge and understanding lurking in it, but have trouble keeping up with the rapidly changing marketplace. The growth in Big Data offers a huge opportunity for market researchers from both the client and supplier sides. It’s vital the profession shows its superior skills of analysis and synthesis, and gets much closer to the action, before someone else does. It’s time we led the transformation from Big Data to Smart Data.

Smarter Data Integration

It is claimed that the typical large company has around 14,000 databases on average and yet most of that data sits in individual departments never being reviewed, let alone integrated. Management’s preference for dashboards requires data to be both consistent and comparable. In one CPG company, I found five initiatives being run concurrently, which each needed the creation of a master data file. By combining efforts, we managed to generate one larger enterprise MDS with a single list of values, definitions and processes, to which each project connected. This resulted in significant savings of resources and better collaboration between project teams.

Smarter Business Understanding

Most research is conducted in relative isolation from the rest of the business, but we now should incorporate the bigger data flowing into our companies from other sources. However this comes with the prerequisite of an important culture change. One CPG company developed a Global Project Management System, but two issues arose:

Marketing rarely referenced it, preferring to request information directly from the research team.
Researchers were reticent to publish their work, claiming confidentiality.

Smarter Questions

Researchers know that getting the right answers depends upon asking the right questions, but for this we need a better understanding of the business, which comes from more involvement. To achieve this, MR needs new skills of sociability and synthesis. We should become more engaged within our organisations, so that we are seen as the invaluable customer representative in all internal discussions. Synthesizing is a skill in which market researchers should excel and yet we still rarely manage to tell the “so what” stories that appeal to management. I believe this comes from not speaking their language. To conclude the perspective of turning Big Data into Smarter Data, we need multiple (new) skills within MR:

Project management, methodological expertise and analytical skills.
Intellectual curiosity to generate insights and help the business to solve problems.
Storytelling, communication and influencing skills to transfer this understanding and inspire action.

If you work alone or in a small team, you will have to rely more on your suppliers for the first tasks, to free up time to develop your consultancy skills. Of course suppliers can and I am sure would welcome the chance to help there too, but for that they require total transparency, something that is often difficult to achieve. Making data smarter requires cultural change. Market research can lead the integration and analysis of all information flowing into organisations today, but must also be seen as the leader in the requires cultural changes too. Isn’t this what we (should) have been doing all along? MREB – the market research arm of the Corporate Executive Board From www.BusinessIntelligence.com From IBM and BusinessIntelligence.com Aaron Zornes, The MDM Institute MDS – Master Data Source CRM – consumer relationship marketing / management Denyse Drummond-Dunn is President & Chief Catalyst of C³Centricity (www.C3Centricity.com), a global consultancy that provides strategic counsel to the executive teams of billion-dollar brands. She is the author of Winning Customer Centricity (www.WinningCustomerCentricity.com), lauded as “A must read for today’s and tomorrow’s marketers”. The book includes many examples from her career of over 30 years’ in senior executive roles with Nestle, Gillette & Philip Morris International. (mobile) dashboards they would prefer. A third study reported that over two-thirds of CMOs feel unprepared for the current data explosion, especially from social media. They appreciate there’s knowledge and understanding lurking in it, but have trouble keeping up with the rapidly changing marketplace. The growth in Big Data offers a huge opportunity for market researchers from both the client and supplier sides. It’s vital the profession shows its superior skills of analysis and synthesis, and gets much closer to the action, before someone else does. It’s time we led the transformation from Big Data to Smart Data. Smarter Data Integration It is claimed that the typical large company has around 14,000 databases on average and yet most of that data sits in individual departments never being reviewed, let alone integrated. Management’s preference for dashboards requires data to be both consistent and comparable. In one CPG company, I found five initiatives being run concurrently, which each needed the creation of a master data file. By combining efforts, we managed to generate one larger enterprise MDS with a single list of values, definitions and processes, to which each project connected. This resulted in significant savings of resources and better collaboration between project teams. Smarter Business Understanding Most research is conducted in relative isolation from the rest of the business, but we now should incorporate the bigger data flowing into our companies from other sources. However this comes with the prerequisite of an important culture change. One CPG company developed a Global Project Management System, but two issues arose:

Marketing rarely referenced it, preferring to request information directly from the research team.
Researchers were reticent to publish their work, claiming confidentiality.

Another CPG company developed a consumer data warehouse, which integrated all consumer information, from market research, call centres and CRM. It provided a holistic view of the consumer, but the rollout beyond test market was delayed because countries didn’t trust the HQ with the same access to information that they had. Both projects would have succeeded had there been more openness and confident collaboration. If MR is to lead the push for smarter data, we need to address the required culture changes, not just solve the technical challenges of data integration. Smarter Questions Researchers know that getting the right answers depends upon asking the right questions, but for this we need a better understanding of the business, which comes from more involvement. To achieve this, MR needs new skills of sociability and synthesis. We should become more engaged within our organisations, so that we are seen as the invaluable customer representative in all internal discussions. Synthesizing is a skill in which market researchers should excel and yet we still rarely manage to tell the “so what” stories that appeal to management. I believe this comes from not speaking their language. To conclude the perspective of turning Big Data into Smarter Data, we need multiple (new) skills within MR:

Project management, methodological expertise and analytical skills.
Intellectual curiosity to generate insights and help the business to solve problems.
Storytelling, communication and influencing skills to transfer this understanding and inspire action.

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