Future Trends
For companies to successfully adapt to today’s fast-paced markets, they must anticipate the needs and dynamics of the future market and customer landscape.
Future Trends research is used to re-energize existing product strategy initiatives, launch product development in new categories, and optimize and prioritize cluttered and unfocused new product pipelines. Solution Partners’ approach includes the following for either a category or industry:
- A review of leading and/or cutting-edge publications and media
- Identifying and interviewing experts and key opinion leaders
- Analyzing and synthesizing the information generated
- Conducting facilitated workshops with the client leadership team and key stakeholders to activate learning
Research Function 360
Provides a 360 assessment of the client’s research organization, its information capabilities, and the needs of the firm. Solution Partners has developed a powerful 3-step process that provides an objective third party view of the current organization. These steps enable internal agreements on the goals and direction of the department as well as a detailed 3 to 5 year strategic plan for building a competitive advantage for the firm.
These steps can be implemented individually or in tandem depending on the department’s unique needs and budget.
- Functional alignment with marketing research trends transforming the industry
- Interviews with key internal stakeholders and market research staff
- A review of functional capabilities -- the organizational structure, information systems, reports, research methods, processes, supplier leveraging, etc.
Each step includes an assessment and roadmap outlining step-by-step goals and activities along with implementation strategies. Solution Partners also often provides coaching and consulting to support the recommended changes.
Research Technique/Capability Evaluation
Solution Partners has developed a systematic approach for assessing current standard research methods (e.g., customer satisfaction, concept testing, etc.) or for developing a new capability (e.g., future trend analysis) which yields significant benefits in efficiencies as well as insights. This powerful process provides a disciplined approach coupled with well-grounded direction for implementation – resulting in the activation of highly actionable research programs. It enables internal agreement on the goals, direction and value of the research capability or program under evaluation.
Insights Training
Senior management expects marketing research to provide deep and actionable insights about customers and markets to drive growth. Unfortunately, these expectations are not always met. Solution Partners has a history of training marketing research staff to their boost insight identification and reporting capabilities. Our approach includes:
- Gaining consensus on the definition of “insights” among all stakeholders
- Providing a toolkit that can aid in discovering insights
- Using the tools on real world client examples
- Providing guidance on how to leverage insights in reporting and communications
- Following up with one-on-one coaching to ensure the insight process takes hold
Testimonial |
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| “Blair Peters and his Solution Partners colleagues performed audits of Zurich's Marketing Research Capabilities, both in North America and globally. Given his strong intellect, work ethic, strategic perspectives, and marketing research experience, Blair is expert at evaluating, assessing, and improving the viability of people, data, processes, and contributions of a marketing research organization, and its ability to support an organization's profitable growth and other strategic objectives.” |
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Steve Magnino |
Learn More
To learn more, please contact:
Blair Peters, Senior Partner
blair.peters@solutionpartners.com
336-255-3077
Larry Chandler, Senior Partner
larry.chandler@solutionpartners.com
847-832-9063