Supplier: "Time, Cost and Quality…Pick any Two." Client: "I need all three."

“More insights in less time with less money.”

How often has this request (or mandate) been delivered to you, either explicitly or implicitly? The answer is it has probably become more common over the last few years. When GutCheck was started in 2010, it wasn’t uncommon for market research providers to pan the idea of delivering insights in quicker timeframes. Clients don’t mind waiting a few weeks for the answer was a refrain we heard often. Well, that has changed dramatically in just the last couple of years. And not only do clients want information quicker, they want it for less and with good quality. Whether you are a big established brand or an emerging scrappy competitor, winning in today’s market hinges on your ability to innovate and differentiate faster and more efficiently than the competition.

This year’s GRIT report shows abundant and growing evidence of this reality. For instance:
GRIT respondents were asked to rank the importance of eight key criteria in selecting methodologies.

• Timeliness of Results ranked #3
• Cost came next at #4
• Most interesting is that time and cost significantly closed the gap on the top two criteria of Data Quality and Effectiveness / Impact.

Corporations must be faster, more innovative, and differentiated than their competitors in order to win in the marketplace. Keen, timely customer insights lie at the heart of a company’s ability to meet this competitive pressure. Nowhere is this more evident than in Procter & Gamble’s move to bring back A.J. Lafley as their CEO. Lafley gained a reputation for pushing innovation at P&G, telling employees to get their ideas directly from consumers. In a nod to GRIT’s findings above, he kept in place a move by his predecessor, Bob McDonald, that brought together teams of marketers, researchers, and executives so they could move together more quickly in their attempt to bring blockbuster new products to the market.

To remain relevant in this type of environment, consumer insights teams must become much more nimble and cost- efficient: in short, they need to become agile. Becoming more agile is one reason why online research communities have grown so much over the last few years. This year’s GRIT report shows online communities continuing to be the #1 fastest growing methodology overall because they provide insights significantly faster and in a more flexible way than traditional methodologies. Online community platforms continue to innovate and in some cases have shrunk timelines to days and driven down costs to new levels. These new solutions now allow researchers to “turn on a dime.”

Leveraging agile practices and methodologies like online research communities to drive immediacy and intimacy is potentially transformative for research departments. Alice Fawver, Director of Global Insights for Logitech and recent adopter of agile techniques, recently commented that her group “has moved from big, expensive and late to flexible, inventive and responsive. And we can do more research for the same budget.” Agile is enabling Logitech to do more research for the same budget and in less time, and arrive at a better result.

So, the next time you need an answer, be Agile and pick all three.