OPINION27 November 2014
According to Google trends, interest in big data on the internet has grown by 159% since this time last year. The hype would have us believe that the insights industry is doomed to be replaced by robots, an algorithm and a few drones.
Researchers, who thrive on battles between methodologies, have naturally argued for a future of quant surveys, human qual and everything in-between. But it doesn’t matter which side of the debate you come down on – new technology or old research methods; because we’ve all missed the point.
Our future is not a choice between technology and traditional research methodologies. What really matters is how we use technology to cook up the raw ingredients into digestible insights. I think that the debate about the future of research needs to be about how best to synthesise information from different sources.
Actually, I don’t even need to hypothesise because the future of insights already exists; Mark Kershisnik, senior director of global market research for Eli Lilly has created it at the company’s CLUE centre in Indiana.
To the untrained eye, the CLUE centre appears to be an extremely high-end qualitative interviewing facility. But the real beauty is how the information collected at CLUE is seamlessly integrated with all of the rest of Lilly’s information assets.
The company’s FocusVision Librarian account stores the interviews, which are streamed and recorded into it. Here, videos along with other qualitative research work from around the world, are transcribed and indexed. Staff can access this research, along with every other insight Lilly owns in its business intelligence repository. This includes data from quantitative research, patent databases, social media, news feeds and internal business information systems.
Information is literally at employees’ fingertips. CSI-style wall-sized screens dominate huge synthesis rooms; the screens are touch sensitive and connected to Lilly’s repository of information. Much like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, users simply touch the screen to access a menu, allowing the user to bring up different information from different sources.
Video clips, tweets, sales figures and more can be dragged up on the screen and annotated to create a living multimedia storyboard. And the screens are useful across the globe too. Teams from all over the world can work on the same analysis from remote locations because the screens support real-time collaboration; meaning that as many minds as possible meet to synthesise information into insights. And this creates a beautifully full circle; as the storyboard can be saved for presentations and future reference, adding the knowledge into Lilly’s repository of information.
According to Kershisnik, the investment in integrating Lilly’s collective data sources and supporting collaborative synthesis with state of the art technology is paying off through reductions in time and eliminating duplication for the company. Lilly is able to identify millions of dollars in savings as well as successful initiatives impacted by having the right information at the right time to power decision-making and produce a rapid ROI on these investments. It is not a surprise that other major corporations have requested tours of Lilly’s CLUE centre.
The future of market research undoubtedly involves big data. There will probably be robots, some algorithms involved and maybe a couple of drones. But it is not an either/or proposition; the future will be an inclusive one, and will ultimately still succeed or fail on the strength of how well it helps people to make the right decisions.
Steve August is chief innovation officer for Focus Vision