Becoming a research partner: Grow into a new version of yourself

Partnering with the right research tech provider helps you simplify your insight firm and improve collaboration with clients. Even if they take the research in-house, it can strengthen the relationship as we’ll explain in this blog. It’s the last in a series of 5 about new opportunities for insight firms.

Opportunity 5: Insight firms can grow into new versions of themselves

Why are firms looking into this?

It should be no surprise that insight firms are always looking for ways to improve their services and research methods and grow their businesses. One way that insight firms can achieve this is by expanding into new areas of market research.

As a result, market research firms must constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of their clients. This might mean expanding into new areas of research or finding partners. By staying ahead of the curve, insight firms can ensure that they remain trusted advisors to their clients for years to come.

How can we use this opportunity to our benefit?

By partnering with the right research platform provider, they can provide the right mix of research methods and features. More importantly, it should be one that can also be called upon to complement their strengths and is always there for advice when they need help niching down horizontally or vertically.

Let’s get practical

We’ll take a hypothetical example called CLEAN-E to make this more relatable. It’s a VC-funded startup with ambitious goals, money to burn and results to be had yesterday.

Let’s say you partner up with a platform excelling in qualitative research. Your insight professionals have become experts in using this platform and it helps you streamline qualitative research for all your clients. And since you implement this software for your clients who do in-house research too, it’s easy to keep everything aligned.

No complicated SLAs or a range of different systems that don’t talk all that well with each other. No confusion about anything either: you’re in complete control.

You talked to the VC firm about a new industry publication backed with original research via said platform and from this VC firm’s clean energy company portfolio. The ultimate goal is to raise awareness and up the content marketing game of the VC firm to attract both new investors and companies to invest in going forward.

You can deliver because you’ve streamlined your processes to the max and have a great understanding of both the industry and the companies that are in it.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Let’s take a few steps back and explore why this is important.

It’s no secret that the market is changing – it always is – but the rate at which new trends and technologies are replacing old ones doesn’t only seem to become faster. It actually is getting faster. And it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Take the tools in the research space, for example. Insight firms can choose between an ever-expanding set of too many tools and platforms to mention in various forms and guises. Whether you’re looking for tools to help you do qualitative or quantitative research, there’s always one seemingly better suited for your particular needs.

The trouble is which one do you choose? Because they all have their pros and cons and some come with caveats that aren’t immediately clear when you purchase them.

Digging through the feature lists, comparing and validating them via reviews has become an industry in itself over the years, with the likes of G2, Capterra and Gartner dominating the space. But even then, it still is hard to pick one. And once you think you’ve found the one, up pops another where the proverbial grass is even greener.

And it’s not just about keeping up with the tools. Insight professionals themselves have to keep up with new research tactics and methods. Not to mention coping with the sheer volume of data to be processed.

Because there’s more data around than ever before and with every passing nanosecond, we’re adding even more. And the kicker is, according to Statista https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/ a whopping 37% of the world’s population isn’t even online yet as of April 2022. So there’s still a lot more data to come.