Both Sides Now: The Importance of Having Both Client and Supplier Side Perspectives

all right well we are at the top of the hours let's go ahead and get started um welcome back everyone who caught our first presentation welcome to everyone who's just getting started with us um my name is bill mcdowell ceo of accelerant research we are your hosts for this february virtual insights conference um if you are just joining us i'll just quickly go through our ground rules that we covered for for the last presentation um we are at the mercy of the tech uh it wasn't a problem last time don't anticipate it will be this time but you go on wood um zoom has definitely been our friend of late for these conferences so fingers crossed that it'll stay that way um second ground rule uh be respectful you know no trolling in in the comments section but definitely do engage interact ask questions um submit any comments we'll be keeping an eye on the q a if you're in the zoom if you're accessing the another point uh youtube linkedin twitter i will be keeping keeping an eye on all that chatter as well um if you are using linkedin or twitter feel free to use the uh the hashtag ar vic just to help us keep track of of any questions they're going through um with that i am going to get out of the way and let jason jacobson kick us off with his talk uh which is titled both sides now the importance of having both client and supplier side perspectives um very excited about this one i cannot stress enough the importance of it so i'm going to to get out of the way and let let jason do his thing stop sharing jason so you can all right all right all good bill on sing it yes sir awesome well thank you so much bill really appreciate the opportunity and uh depending on time zone either good afternoon or good morning to everyone i know it's always tough to find time to uh you know fit in a conference but i really appreciate everyone taking the opportunity to listen in and you know as bill said um feel free to do comments and chats and i'll i'll try to you know address anything as they um they come up but probably do it towards the end of um of the presentation so one of the things that seems to come up time and time again um it's listed in the grip report it seems every year it seems to be a a topic that comes up just in in conversation is that there's really a gap between what buyers or sort of client-side researchers want and need and what suppliers are providing and this literally just from the latest report there's a great quote you guys can kind of read it but they talk about this gap between the um in the relationship there and um i had spent gosh over 20 plus years on the um supplier side in my career working for various companies from some larger scale global companies like miller brown to some very small consulting type companies on the research side and as much as being on the supplier side felt like i really understood what it was like to be a client and really understood what it was like to be in their shoes this past year i came over to woodside homes and now i'm on the client side and boy it's a really really different perspective and i think having both perspectives now like anything in life gives you a little bit of clarity and there's some people that spend their entire careers on the supplier side there's some people that spend their entire careers on the client side there's some people like i am now that cross over but i think really having both perspectives and seeing things through both lenses just like everything else in life i think leads to more powerful um relationships and what i found is that what happens on the supplier side and what happens on the client side if you haven't sat in both of those it's a little bit of a black box like you don't really totally know when a supplier is working for you what's going on behind the scenes and similarly if you're a supplier and you're working with a client you don't always know everything that's going on behind the scenes as well so i'm hoping to give a little bit of insight into what's inside that black box you know in insights and research i think one of the the hottest things we talk about all the time is the importance of customer empathy right we need to feel what it's like to be in our customers shoes we need to understand their needs and i think just as important there needs to be some more empathy from the client and the supplier side perspective as well and for us to kind of be in each other's shoes and again to have some empathy and to really really close that gap that the grit report and other things talk about so let's uh kind of in the spirit of empathy let's try to have sort of both client and supplier side being a an insights person i went and pulled some people um on both sides that i've had really strong relationships with and asked them you know what are some areas where you feel like there's a little bit of a disconnect and um seven topic areas came up which i'm going to go through each of them their research objectives research proposals dashboards reporting insights getting feedback agile and speed timing and then if i have a little bit of time at the end i think seven is always a good positive number but i threw into eighth one which is that some general laundry list of um of areas and just to kind of set the stage the way that i'm going to talk about each of these is starting with for each of the areas how does a supplier view this what is their lens what is their perspective what are they really thinking about for that topic area and then what does a client really feel like what's their perspective how are they viewing that insight and research topic area and then over the past year um been very grateful and thankful at woodside homes i i hopefully not they'll say it i've developed some really really strong relationships um with suppliers and i think there are things that we did from both sides that led to success so i'll use that um as a little mini case study to talk to what are some of the things that we did to really think help close the gap have a successful relationship and overcome some of the barriers and hurdles that we see for each of those major research areas so starting first with research objectives so research objectives right so if you're a supplier you you know maybe it comes across an rfp maybe it just comes across in a general conversation with an existing client and you see those words objectives you generally get pretty excited about it but you also tend to take a pretty narrow view of research objectives because you're thinking about how do i scope this research engagement how do i price it um you sometimes start thinking methodology maybe get excited about wow maybe there's something really creative that i can do to address this or maybe there's something more traditional you start thinking about how do i either build a survey or how do i build a mod guide like what are the questions that i need to ask and you do think about a little bit of the end of like what are the insights that this client really wants they've given me these objectives um and and how do i start to think about how i'm gonna build something to get the information that they need and and it's a bit of a generalization but i think it when a supplier thinks about those objectives just given the nature of their work they tend to go to that place on the client side though we think about objectives in that way but we also take a much broader view of objectives as well so when we think objectives we think about who what stakeholder in my organization is really needing this information is it the cmo is it someone in product is it someone in design based off of the insights and the research what sort of decisions do they really need to make what information do they need what actions do they need to take um you know a hot button word is jobs to be done we use that a lot internally here thinking about at the end of the day with this research you know what's the jobs to be done what's the information that we need to make key decisions um we think about how do these results need to be packaged we've got some people here where they need a really large deck lots of information lots of data and we've got some people at the executive level where we need to give them the pre-packaged two-page visual just the decisions and we're thinking about sort of some of those trade-offs um oftentimes we need to think about how does this specific research effort fit within our larger research ecosystem so is this just a one-off research study and a set of objectives or is it sort of filling the gaps in some other things that we're already doing we think about what does success look like because our role is to really communicate and help our end stakeholders make decisions so we're thinking about sort of even further down the line than just the specific research study and i think one of the things that happens on the supplier side too is that you tend to think a little bit more methods and you're thinking about scales and approach and on the client side yes we're concerned about that but i think we're we're a little bit sometimes a little bit more open maybe to the type of approach and it's more just we want to have real strong confidence in that whatever the approach is and whether it's a three-point scale or a five-point scale or it's qualitative or it's quantitative that we're just really answering the key issues and there's oftentimes a little bit more openness in the um the approach with just having confidence that we're going to get to the information that's ultimately needed by our stakeholders we um work with a really great supplier for the first time here at woodside homes and um the whole engagement was very positive and i think one of the things you know setting up research for success that we did that i think led to a successful engagement and kind of closed the gap on understanding objectives is um like a lot of people do we had a kickoff meeting but we it was a bit more expansive than maybe a normal kickoff meeting we actually um brought in um our marketing stakeholders to that meeting and as much as we had really standard research objectives we had the end stakeholder talk about what their needs are i think it was really important they just kind of talked in their own words let them sort of run off unfiltered and i think it gave the supplier a really good perspective on what we're trying to get to because sometimes that gets a little bit filtered and we don't let our stakeholders speak we did that here and it was really helpful for the supplier to understand what were their needs um even though we started with a set of objectives after that meeting we workshopped it and we came down to three key objectives that we all agreed on so even though we started with those we let them have some back and forth and then we came to some mutual agreement we showed how the research effort really fit i used this word ecosystem because it was important this wasn't just a one-off this research needed to fit within some larger things that we were doing so we gave them some insight into where that fit you know i think it's used you know starting with the end in mind we started with at the end of the day we need our research to tell us xyz and we were really clear on that with them and we came to some mutual agreement on the scope and the method so it was a very collaborative effort and it ended up being really successful because we just i think took some of these extra measures to really hone in on what the research objectives were the next one i'll talk about is research proposals so are you know kind of like a standard rfe if you're a supplier and you get a rfp it's like a whoo all right this is great you know an rfp came through there's a level of excitement you get this opportunity to you know maybe have some new work um really show off your skill set um you know it tends to raise the energy for everyone in the company um there's always time to sort of dig into the proposal and immediately start to create a framework what i found is sometimes there's a desire to really focus on like as a supplier who is your team and what do you bring to the table maybe a little bit less on the method and sometimes on the supplier side you get an rfp and there's almost this assumption that well the client put it together they really thought about all the issues so i don't think i'm going to ask that many questions um or they assume that you know as a client we're really busy and you don't want to be bothered and they don't always take the extra step of asking some questions know that any proposal that's put together on the supplier side takes an incredible amount of time effort and investment unpaid for and you know you have to set aside time it's a lot of hours it sometimes takes more effort than a research report to put that together i found on the supplier side you can be really really focused on price because you're trying to win and you think price may be sort of that you know one of the things that tips it there's always this opportunity you want to present in person yes it's great to you know send over via email but the opportunity to you know let's call it zoom in person nowadays and really walk through your rationale i think what happens with proposals sometimes they go into this ether and you send it off and there's this black box and there's this radio silence and and and boy you know you put in all that time and effort and if you're not selected it can be really really hard um and sometimes it's actually okay because maybe it's not a good fit on the client side you know we we worked on a few rfps it's an incredible amount of work as well just putting the rfp together figuring out what's the research scope what are the objectives what are our business goals and um and when you put it all together it's like oh gosh now i've got to find time to answer questions and review proposals and set up calls so um it's a lot of time and investment on the client side as well and one of the things that i found on this side of the table is that we really want a partner to be successful so um when we send out an rfp there's sort of this expectation that whoever we're sending it to we're going to select somebody but we want you to be successful because if you're successful we're successful and um we get i've seen a lot of proposals that are so focused on the team or the supplier or the company or their background and they spend a lot of slides and a lot of time and energy but we've kind of already selected you so we have a little bit of um knowledge and some confidence in the ability to do the work and that proposals aren't often as focused on what are the end results and who's going the extra mile i really on sitting on the client side like it when suppliers want to set up a phone call want to talk through the proposal show some extra interest want to bounce questions off i now have been in this position for several um research engagement we got some amazing amazing proposals and it was really really tough to make a decision um and some that i thought would win were not selected and sometimes here a cmo just said i like that one better so that that does happen so sometimes you know like from the supplier side you could do everything right and still not win it because one of the decision makers just says well you know i like that one better um and i think on the client side unfortunately sometimes after this whole rfp process there's not a lot of follow up with suppliers the way that there should be especially for ones that don't win or when a proposal gets put on hold and what i found on this side too while price is such an issue on the supplier side or we think it is it isn't always on the client side yes price matters but we also have a budget and sometimes we actually need to have research engagements that might be a little bit higher in dollar scope to justify our budget and to keep it free for years on end so there's a tricky thing with price that kind of comes up on a on a case-by-case basis we um had a we've had a couple of really large engagements here from an rfp and proposal perspective as website homes we're going through lots of new initiatives and one of the things for our most recent one that i think really helped again kind of close the gap is that one of the vendors that we selected they um set up some phone calls to talk through our needs they showed an incredible amount of personal interest in the research which really felt like wow they really care and they really want to work with us their proposal in contrast to some of the others that we got got right to the point it was very personalized it was very focused on the end research needs it was less focused for them on on their team it was more about what they're going to do how they're going to solve our problems and why their approach works and why it's right what we did on our side is we really coached them yes we gave them the proposal but we said if you do this this will help you succeed so we tried to really guide them in the proposal for success because again their success leads to our success on both sides and then once we did a selection at least what i did is followed up with each of the suppliers it was very hard conversations you know to say that they weren't selected but i think there was you know again some empathy of acknowledging the work that they put forth and that there's going to be other opportunities and talk through the selection process so they just weren't left there kind of in the ether with with um radio silence and i think it's helped kind of keep some really good relationships going because we have used some of these other vendors for some other opportunities the next one is dashboards i call this dashboard new technology ai and machine learning uh gosh on the on the supplier side there are so many companies right now offering dashboards and when you're a supplier you're excited you've got a new dashboard or a new way of showing data or you're showing decision decision-ready insights and you know you come across well this dashboard or this technology is going to save you time and money and effort and it's going to be value-added and they use the word is going to democratize your data and we have a subscription and probably like a lot of people now sitting on the client side you know i get inundated with emails about this and and some are personalized and some are just completely canned um some are just selling the technology um but they're not selling the solution the ones that do this better are selling the solution and how it really helps solve issues sitting now on the client side when i was on the supplier side and came up with new dashboards and new technology you know i had this level of excitement i always thought gosh how how's the client not going to sign up and take this sitting on the client side though we are drowning in data it's almost too much data at times we have so many dashboards already and sometimes it's like oh my gosh another dashboard um some of these dashboards are great and they help me make decisions but it's it's hard it takes time and energy and effort to learn a new dashboard to figure out how that data is going to fit into your ecosystem um if there is a new technology or a new solution it isn't just a simple sign up process internally we have to make the business case that we want to invest in this and this is why um we need to demonstrate that there's some return on investment um you know it's very hard to sign up for a dashboard or a new technology for an entire year um if we haven't seen it and if we haven't experienced it and give that full commitment because that is a big investment um and what i found with you know new technology and dashboards is some of them just don't tell a story they are maybe overly complicated or they use some really cool things and have some great bells and whistles um but they oftentimes aren't action oriented or they don't tell a story and so we are working with actually three let's call them sort of dashboards um sas type systems um and we signed up for them and they've been really successful but we did some extra things one is on their side is they did some personal reach outs they really understood what our business needs and some of the challenges were they gave us a trial subscription which was fantastic they said try it for a quarter we paid for a quarter use it see if it works and at the end of the quarter if you don't like it you can stop the contract but if you like it then you can commit to a year which was much easier internally here to get management on board to get a new technology and a new system in place what but all three of these providers did is they really helped us get on boarded you know they set up time they have an internal team that helped us start using their data um they did a lot of learning and tutorials so immediately they got us engaged and took some of the barriers away prior to selling in we gave them our data and they used as a case example so we really got to see that information and see it in use and sort of just buying the catalog we bought what it actually was going to do for us using our data two of them has some apis with our current system which makes it super easy um and one of the things about the dashboards um that are really unique about these three is that it's not just data it has um actions it really gives some very good clarity and indicators and it provides recommendations and it tells a story so these dashboards aren't just sitting there we're not just running things and kind of looking for information they are identifying areas that we either need to improve on or they're saying hey this is an issue you need to go look further into this and they really shine and they've taken dashboards and taking them to the next step which from the client is really really useful and has helped been a very successful engagement the next issue is reporting and insights so um you know from a supplier side um you know when you put a a report or an inside stack together you know that that's really your opportunity to demonstrate your value it's your you know it's the end result it's you know what we're paying for it's obviously the intellectual capital and the partnership and the things that go into it ahead of time but at the end of the day that report is you know it's your deliverable um oftentimes on the supplier side it's the fun part you know digging in producing something that you can you know put your your brand and your stamp behind is often where you feel a lot of pride sometimes there's just a desire to um do too much and you want to show all of your work and produce this big deck or this big appendix you really want to make something super visually appealing and compelling um and you try to sort of balance this all you know how do you tell a story versus showing the data and having the information um and what i found on the supplier side sometimes you kind of have what you think is the end deliverable in mind but you don't always know what that is and sometimes there's a mismatch in what you produce from the client side from the reporting and the insights what we're really trying to do is make this package into a digestible format it needs to be compelling we are dealing with stakeholders who sometimes only have 10 minutes sometimes when we have 30 minutes and we need to figure out how are we going to get this information in a way that just gets them to implications and what decisions they should make more is not always better um even though great getting great decks is fantastic oftentimes most of that stuff is moved to the appendix or it's fine to see tabs or it's fine just to see the data behind the scenes one of the things that we're really trying to do here is as as much as it's great to see a number as much as it's great to see a percentage as much as it's even great to see a quote bringing that research to life and humanizing it with video and with emotion really really connects with our and stakeholders and sometimes that's what they take away um even though the data might be tell you one story from the supplier side from the client side there's oftentimes some internal politics and we might need to kind of you know make the story work in a certain way so instead of sometimes we need to be super directive sometimes because internal politics we just need to be more descriptive to make sure that we're not maybe you know um saying something that's against what somebody else internally thinks about and i think ultimately with reporting and insights on the client side what we really want our insights department is is to be at the beginning of the value chain we want our internal stakeholders to lead their meetings with our research says our research says this our research says this therefore we do this and the more that a supplier can help us get to that point the more successful that i think we're going to be from a reporting insights perspective so it's less about the data and it's even sometimes less about the story and it's more about the decisions and and and the action and the directions that we're giving our stakeholders and we um are just wrapping up an engagement with a really incredible um vendor who just actually presented to um two of our high-level executives and there are some things that really really led that that end report to success one is on their side they um set the stage for like why we were doing this research they gave a little bit of credibility for the why behind their results um they provided information in a 10-page depth it was digestible it was easy to follow it had very clear directions moved everything else into the appendix it was very decision focused not data focused and what really helped is we had a lot of check-ins with their team so before they ever produced this deck we had about four check-ins and kept evolving it together as a team so we kind of got to a place where we knew what our end stakeholders needed and we really helped them evolve the deck to meet that they used video in a very compelling way um it really connected with our end stakeholders who brought the voice of the research to life and it was interesting i've seen some very slick reporting decks theirs wasn't super slick and it's not it's not to say that that's a downside to things it was fine it was clear it had a lot of white space it didn't have sometimes i see these reports with so many bells and whistles and so many visuals that it takes away from the data theirs was was nice but our end stakeholders just appreciated a little bit more of the kind of the simplicity and the in the direction behind it next one getting feedback okay so on the supplier side whether you know you produce a survey a moderator guide or report um you put so much time into putting these deliverables you want to turn things around quickly you're doing your best to make sure that these deliverables are client ready you want to get it right you want to impress it and you get that email right of oh my gosh there's comments and there's this fear of opening up the the powerpoint deck or the word doc and seeing strikethroughs and in in comments and then you're like disappointed that you didn't hit um the mark and you don't always have visibility and gosh why were all these changes um there but there's also this willingness to like do whatever it takes to make it right and i think sometimes there's this either need or desire depending on the extensiveness of the feedback to maybe push back a little bit and i think that's okay but you know feedback in general in life can be hard right um getting feedback on your deliverables sometimes you sort of need to take that breath and get to a good place and never kind of take it personal um and taking in the right spirit because you know what i found on being on the client side with the feedback is we don't always know what we want i wish we did i wish we had a crystal ball but until we see it um then we're able to give feedback and react to it and sometimes what will happen is like in being on this side we'll have a questionnaire we'll have a mod guide we'll even have a report and then somebody hire up looks at it and just blows it up and says i want a completely different thing and that's going to happen and we have to sort of take this and then make the augmentations and the edits to it sometimes on the client side we just don't provide the right clarity we think we're clear but we're not providing the right direction sometimes um from the time the supplier started working on the deliverable to several weeks down the road things change um and we need to account for that and i think just know that hopefully for most clients when they're giving feedback it's in the spirit of success and it's the spirit of let's get this right let's work through this together it's not that anything was done wrong but give some background on maybe why the changes were there we know our stakeholders best and just know from us it's also okay to push back if this is pushing something out of scope if this is beyond what's expected um you don't just have to take like what we our word for and i think if there's a true partnership and a two relationship there there's going to be some give and take on feedback and um one of the things with um one of the suppliers or the one that actually did our the report deliverable that i was talking about um that led to a very successful sort of feedback system is um they asked a lot of questions up front prior to every deliverable they one of the questions they asked i think was fantastic they said um they posed this open-ended question this would be great if your report did the following and they asked this open-ended question and we talked through it so they made sure that the report hit that mark um they we really talked through who are end stakeholders how did they learn um tried to be really clear in our business situation we set expectations about the deliverables so one of the things that we did here is we didn't expect things to be final um and we did brainstorm sessions we saw outlines we saw early drafts and yes there was more time on our side from the client side probably some a little bit more time on the supplier side but seeing things early and evolving them together help with that feedback cycle so it wasn't saying oh this was off we knew where things were the entire time and just kept moving it along together and i think it was okay we said look i know this is going to be early i know this is going to be rough i'd rather see it in that format before the final format so we can make changes along the way and um it was just a much more sort of you know collaborative session that got there and again i think sometimes on the supplier side you just want to show your beautiful end result and i think it's okay to be dirty and it's okay to show drafts and i think that gets you to that better space at the end so you're you're all on the same page um agility and speed right there's so much talk on the on a lot of supplier side faster is better it's better provide bite-size information everyone needs to keep a pulse you know agile research is great it could be less expensive and yes yes yes to all those things and from the client side because i get you know inundated with this you know sort of types of requests from suppliers to sort of have this type of research it works well for specific types of situations we're doing iterative design we're doing some design changes here works great there um when we have a couple quick questions we just need an answer to works great um we have some ongoing quick pulse studies works great um but the one thing with agile fast research is on the client side just know that we also need to be mindful that um the sample is good we have some hard to reach audiences here at woodside homes trying to find home buyers and people in the market so even doing things we can't do things super fast sometimes because the sample could be a little bit tricky and we need to have some flexibility in the question types even when research is done fast it still takes some time to analyze it and one of the things i've really learned on the client side is more and fast isn't always better it is at times but it takes time to institutionalize research we can only feed our internal stakeholders so much and we need to be sort of mindful about when we deliver information so it has the most impact and so we don't overwhelm people so i think the big thing is just agile research works but it needs to sort of fit the right situation and it also when it comes across it needs to align with our other findings because if we do something quick and fast and it's disparate or it's divergent and something that we've seen before there there could be some issues there so just sort of i think be mindful of kind of those um perspectives and we're working with um a provider that we do a lot of sort of iterate not a lot but a fair amount of iterative work with them but one of the things that makes that successful is we have a lot of control over the sample their systems easy to program there's a lot of flexibility in the question types the output is really really easy to understand it's low-cost video and on their side they really provide great customer service in terms of helping us use the platform turn things around and turn things around quickly so the last sort of big one is is timing and um so from us a supplier side you know we there's a lot of urgency in in trying to get things over the finish line whether it's sign a a contract whether it's win a project um you know the um i have a lot of empathy for you know business development sales people you're making projections you're trying to say what are you going to be this quarter you're making commitments way up the the chain you're trying to qualify leads like is this somebody i should follow up with is this a hot lead do they really have budget do i need to spend my time with them um internally you're trying to manage your staffing and workload and have some forecasts and projections and some suppliers can be pretty pushy on this um and some can be great with with just the check-ins but just kind of i think on the supplier side understand timing has an incredible amount of importance and it impacts so many things at the business on the flip side on the client side we oftentimes have less urgency sometimes things need to move quick and we can do so but oftentimes in order to sign up for something or get a research study across the finish line we need to make a business case internally for that investment we need to show the roi our budget cycles vary like one quarter some things can be put on hold the next quarter the floodgates can open up we could be at the end of the year where we have um extra money what one project might be a priority and we think that it's going to go and then another project comes in all of a sudden it has higher priority and we have to juggle and move things around um oftentimes we you know to make a decision it's got to pass through legal it's got to get approval from multiple stakeholders and i would say check-ins are okay but pushing is not and kind of can fracture some um some relationships and we've um we've onboarded a couple of um suppliers and one of the things i tried to be really respectful of is the transparency on timing so they were transparent that they were trying to do some projections here was the end of their quarter and and we were really um up front about how long this was going to take to make a decision we gave them what we need to make the business case so in order to invest in this research we need x y and z and they provided that information to us which really helped us internally build um the business case we talked through different barriers that um needed to happen in order to move forward and then they showed some flexibility in their terms too so um you know timing's one of those kind of crunchy things and i think again just sort of you know more transparency on both sides it's led to success for us i thought i would just leave with a little bit of a of a barrage of uh kind of bonus round things it's just things that we're sort of i kind of come up and have you know sort of percolated in my nearly 25 years in the industry and seeing how things have evolved and and just having some conversations about this presentation with a few others so some some maybe tidbits for suppliers depending on if you're out there um sort of my wish list of things is there is so much focus now on customer empathy and emotion in qualitative information but it's hard to put that all together in a digestible way you going through videos even when you could do snippets even when you could do themes it's tough to put that all together and make that super strategic so there's suppliers out there that can help with that qualitative humanizing in a more strategic way i think that's a a need out there we need to just really get our behavioral science down yes surveys are great but the more actionable information comes from understanding consumers and contacts from understanding emotions and understanding motivations and what drives their decisions and there's some great neuroscience going on out there but evolving our measurement system is going to help us be more predictive and i think helps suppliers produce better results i think um cx and ux and branding sometimes those areas and i get it are very disparate but i think they can be maybe viewed a little bit more holistically because at the end of the day they all sort of get to a place of understanding consumers um in leading to insights and sometimes ux and cx are are disparate but there's a lot of crossover there so it'd be great to see those groups coalesce can work together a little bit more um being on the the client side i get canned emails all the time for those sales people out there it's great when something's personal whenever somebody sends me a personal email and they've taken the time to maybe learn more about what my business needs are i will reply when something's canned or it's you know it's clear that they don't haven't taken some extra energy generally i think a client's not gonna reply and just added a few other things i think um in terms of um there's a lot going on with ai and machine learning and what i would say with all these kind of things at the end here is don't sell the technology sell the solution sell what your technology is going to do for a client and how it's going to make these decisions because words like ai and machine learning and text analytics um don't get us where we need to go that's the engine but focus on the solutions and focus on the actions in the decisions that we're going to be able to make based off of that information sorry i'm a little bit on my uh on a high horse here so apologies for that but on the client side i think the things that we can do is really be much more clear with suppliers on what our desired outcomes are i think sometimes we think that we're clear or we put an rfp together or we put out their objectives but we're not clear enough i think it's important to talk about where insight sits in the organization is it mature is it new um where does it sit in the value chain to help suppliers have a better perspective on what sort of information they need to provide um just being open and honest about some of the barriers that it's going to take for research to go into the organization again just being transparent providing more timely feedback and one of the things that i've seen on the client side is is regardless of the what the supplier does whether they win a project or not is say thank you and be appreciative i know it's a simple thing but sometimes that goes a long way to um to building relationships it's just being appreciative of the work um in taking that extra step and you know kind of my four summary points here is um in terms of the visual is i think more collaboration is needed between suppliers and clients because we're going to get to end results better you know putting each other's shoes having more empathy having more understanding again i sort of hit this point of don't sell the technology think about the solution and let's get there and let's start with the end in mind and i think that's one thing on the client side that we could be clearer is where does this need to be what are the actions that we need to take and let's really get the information there and be more clear there and i think that'll all help close the gap so with that i really thank you for your time i will um turn this over to bill and see uh if there's any sort of questions all right any questions go ahead and submit them now for jason um checking to see if any have come through and while we wait on that you know their term partnership is one that everybody likes to throw around in in the research world um but it you know it's true you know the things that you have described um you know this sort of empathy openness communication you know oftentimes we do take this like you know seller and sell the approach and it becomes you know adversarial at times um but now to the extent that you can sort of you know be open with one another ask questions show those vulnerabilities it it tends to help tremendously yeah no completely agreed and i think that's just again i kind of opening up that black box a bit helps and and i think overcoming from the supplier side overcoming the need to be perfect and i think that's really helped and again from the client side giving more visibility i think those are the kind of the two areas where i see those sticking points on the supplier saying look this is a rough draft this is my outline but i want to make sure that i'm hitting the mark and from the client side saying that's great yeah it's going to take me a little bit extra time but let me review that because i think what happens is things are delivered too much oftentimes and like what's quote unquote the final stage and you've got this mismatch of of expectations and that's where you know you can get some of that butting of heads or a little bit of that um yeah that happens um we had a great question coming from from andrew do you also feel it's important to follow up after the research has been delivered and share how the research was used and the outcomes yeah yeah no absolutely i think that was one of the things on the supplier side that i always felt was like reproduce this report we gave direction and oh my gosh what happened and then you're waiting to see like did that ad that we tested come through or did that product come through and yes and i think what i've been trying to do on this side is follow up with you know you recommended xyz here's where we're at or here's where we're at in the development cycle or we decided to do xyz but here's why and i think that gives some greater understanding and i think that's a great area to again sort of keep the conversation going what i found on the supplier side is great at the end to do you know almost like your grand rounds of your business case like what did we recommend but then follow up with the client or vice versa and then talk through what did you end up doing with the research what sort of decisions and it could be something where you know nothing happened because of you know internal budget things got stalled or things got delayed or you know that was such a great insight and here's some of the things that we did based off of it and i think from the supplier it's great to hear that right because you're like wow my work had value and i did something and from the client side again sort of it helps keep evolving that relationship and it is it's all about relationships um and like any relationship it requires work and effort and you know you can't do it on every single engagement sometimes you're up to your eyeballs and you just can't circle back and share those results um but to your point you know attempting to is always a good thing i know we've got a lot of young researchers that are that are in attendance and i know when you're just getting started in your career you don't necessarily get to pick and choose you you get that foot in the door wherever you can corporate side supplier side you name it but you know i love the topic and i love that you've you know spent time talking about it because i do feel like it is such an important thing to if you're mapping out that insights career being able to spend some time on on both sides of the fence it just it helps so tremendously yeah absolutely and i think on the supplier side you you know you you learn how research gets done i think and that's the important thing you learn how to trade off methods you learn you know sort of sample efficacy you know you um you get into the weeds which i think is really really critical as well as you know telling a story you know and on the client side what you really learn is how to package research to help your stakeholders make decisions and it's a very very different lens but they're so incredibly important so i would say to young researchers you know like i said i started off on the supplier side i'm on the client side i've seen people do the reverse but if you have the opportunity to kind of you know dip your toe in in both waters great if you really like one track on this the supplier side what i would say is ask these more probing questions of your client like who are the stakeholders um how does this research fit is this a one-off to give you greater sort of empathy and understanding what decisions need to get made and if you're on the client side and you just want to be there immerse yourself in some methods you know or ask your supplier you know you recommended xyz why'd you do that you know what were some of the things that you traded off i think to get a little bit understanding more at the the sheer methodological level now and you alluded to some of this and it sounds like even in your current role um you know the client side today ain't what it used to be in terms of you know it used to be the you commission research you receive results on the back end now you know it's very easy to to get a corporate you know qualtrics account um conduct some some surveys yourself do do some diy um and those abilities do help to just if you're on the corporate side to be able to dabble in you know some of these more you know nuts and bolts elements right yes yeah and no i mean certainly you know um having diy tools and you know democratizing data and having dashboards and easy access you know in some ways it makes our job easier right because of you know budgets or to be able to you know turn something around quickly or to have you know easier access um but in some ways you still need to package it and i think that that that's the ending so yes it's great to be able to you know put a survey out quickly it's great to get you know video commentary it's great to um you know sort of again have sort of major access to information like we've never had before um but the still challenges i'm dealing with you know marketing and product and and you know people from various roles and insights isn't their background and understanding data isn't their background they're like i need to make xyz decision so those tools really help us at least get that information quicker but there's still the you know the packaging of how do i figure out how to present the information that meets their learning style what are the three takeaways that they really need and also with research and insights is how do i make sure that um a i have their back because i'm support like i'm you know supporting them but b how do i put it in a way that they're going to understand because if i show numbers i kind of alluded this numbers are one thing percents are another thing quotes are powerful video is powerful or even just a visual and you know these are the three steps um you know just takes it to another level which really needs to happen because you know they can't spend their time being immersed they're trusting us that we've sort of immersed ourselves in the story and they're saying i have x y z issue what do i do about it based on what you found and not only that but how does that research effort or that insight fit into some other things that you know that they're doing or they might know and how do we make sure that it you know aligns and if it's contradictory which sometimes it is posing it in the right way so we don't you know off put them but we sort of say hero is another perspective um and here's how it fits with what you know well and it goes back to tyler's presentation earlier today in the bureaucracy and the politics of research i mean that's what better place than the corporate side to learn all of this yes absolutely yeah fantastic um i do recommend if you're a young researcher i want you to bookmark this this webinar this is really good stuff and very very impactful and even if you've been at it for a while it's you know some really good stuff shared here um listen i think that does it for the q a just one last quick check yeah i think you uh you did it congratulations um just a couple of real quick housekeeping items um we are going to be uh posting all of the videos from today and archiving them so definitely you know look out for that should have those up um in the next day or two uh again mark your calendars for for march 25th which will be our next uh our next conference installment um and that's it jason i appreciate it thank you for closing us out today thank you everyone for your time really appreciate it yeah and thanks everybody for attending uh this is great we'll catch you next time