The need for research
Business research is at the forefront of all business and sales planning and training if organisations are to produce the right goods and services and present them in the right way to the right people at the right time. Information is power. This research might take many forms; for example,
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direct market research to plan marketing campaigns or product development
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customer and client research to establish such things as satisfaction levels, service requirements and possible development areas
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Competitor analysis – directly or through existing customers
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Benchmarking and best in class studies – how good can you get
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Business analysis, feasibility studies and market potential analysis
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Quality management and total quality control analysis
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Top performance analysis and role modelling – both internally and externally
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Internal research to establish organisational processes and flows.
What is our
approach?
Our approach can use
the full range of approaches open to the researcher – questionnaires, spot
checking, group and individual interviewing, interactive workshops and
research of published material including academic and professional
research. We tend to prefer the qualitative approach to data collection as
with business orienteering – discovering what
people really do rather than what they say they do. To this end direct
observation and individual analysis such as personality profiling and psychometric testing may also be used.
Most of out associates are research graduates, some to doctoral level but all are successful consultants and business people in their own right. They work with business people in a business setting understanding that business life is always in a moving state.
The benefits
of our work
Research of this
nature can often be quite sensitive and highly confidential to the client.
This must be respected. We are, however, particularly skilled at
discovering the information which is not openly available such as
competitor activity and procedures. As outsiders we often bring a new
approach and certainly some different questions. All our research has had
a practical purpose – the development of market share, the elimination of
client problems, the better facilitation of support services, the creation
of more efficient management controls, the growth of more profitable
business, and so on. Much of the research has repaid the research costs
within a short time period – some enormously so. All have provided
management with information which they may not have gained themselves and
which has proved pivotal in their marketing and business development.
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