Less time crunching, more time for consulting
Tools used
- Survey design
- Data analytics
- Data visualizations
BMG Research wanted to move away from intensive manual market research processes and focus on value add. They needed a platform to automate the reporting.
The challenge
Embracing rapid turnaround and faster delivery time
To grow its business and enhance the experience for its clients, BMG Research wanted to deliver results within 24 hours of fieldwork finishing. BMG had noticed an increasing emphasis on rapid turnaround times in new research briefs and from conversations with existing clients. It needed to improve on current delivery times, which could stretch across two weeks by the time lengthy reports consisting of charts and statistics had been updated with each new cycle of data, and then checked for accuracy.
With a large proportion of public service clients, BMG also wanted to offer a simple way to put findings into the public domain by publishing them on publicly accessible or access-controlled web pages, as needed.
Beyond this, BMG was concerned that its experts were spending disproportionate amounts of time responding to client requests to run extra queries on the data. In practice, only a minority of these turned out to be informative, but they all took time. This meant conversations with clients were largely dominated with the mechanics of obtaining the data, leaving little time for more valuable discussions around interpreting the findings and generating insight.
“There has been a lot of rhetoric over the years about how do you step over from being a provider of data into a provider of insights: raising the level of conversation with the client to performing a more consultative role. It’s probably the first time I’ve seen a bit of software that genuinely allows you to do that. Forsta Visualizations really enables us to do that.”
Simon Wood
Head of Research, BMG Research
Our solution
Automating the publishing of results to free valuable time
A conversation with BMG Research’s account manager at Forsta identified that Forsta Visualizations would solve the issue of publishing results to the web, while also containing all the capabilities to make both routine report creation and handling ad hoc queries much more productive.
BMG replaced a multi-stage process that involved a lot of manual work into a much simpler and more automated two-stage process. As fieldwork is completed, the new data from the Forsta Platform is loaded into a central data repository within the Forsta Visualizations tool. This detects and deals with any changes from the previous wave.
The BMG team then run a few checks to ensure the data are all present and correct. Forsta Visualizations then populates the reports with all the current data ready for extraction in PowerPoint or to be made available to the client for them to access directly. BMG takes advantage of the fieldwork period to lay out the reports in Forsta Visualizations’ StoryCreator environment, so that as soon as the data are ready, the reports are produced.
The results
Report delivery in 24 hours, with better productive and client engagement
What previously took one or two weeks to complete, is now delivered in a few hours, allowing BMG Research to meet its goal of getting results to clients 24 hours after fieldwork has closed.
Previously, when problems arose, BMG’s experts could find themselves working late into the night to meet reporting deadlines. Since moving to Forsta Visualizations, Simon Wood, Head of Research at BMG Research, reports employees are enjoying a better work/life balance as the need to work overtime has been much reduced. Simon cites one complex project that tied up several people for five or six days which is now turned around in a day, with around a third of the effort.
The most significant improvement for BMG Research has been around the ad hoc queries that flood in once the client has had the initial report. “Before we had Forsta Visualizations on these projects, and because these things are never planned in, it could take you a couple of days to respond to each one,” says Simon. “And after all that, so often it did not tell them anything.” Instead, BMG Research now gives many of their clients access so they can run these queries for themselves – instantly in most cases. It has transformed how BMG’s experts work with their clients.
Simon is convinced that the time and effort involved on both sides in resolving requests for additional analysis acted as a brake on clients getting all they could from their data, as some lines of enquiry were just too difficult to pursue. He believes empowering clients to run their own queries lets them to go deeper, and that is leading to more informed thinking.
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