Hands-on knowledge resources

Recently I have participated in several research events in London and have found very intriguing that Analytics & Insights professionals from very different industries highlight importance of the hands-on knowledge resources in their everyday work.

In the conversations they have underlined that knowledge resources enable them to build bigger picture on business questions & challenges, and make their stories more influential.

This drove me to come back after unusually long silence (and the reason for this I’ll share in the my later posts!), and reflect on my experience where hands-on knowledge resources have always played an important role in the day-to-day job (so that I was even a market champion for knowledge sources in P&G).

From my experience, hands-on research resources are the most beneficial in the following areas.

Knowledge resources enable me to identify potential business challenges & research needs, build a perspective from outside the company or even market/ industry on business question, help to stay less biased while working on research learnings and get inspiration for business recommendations.

For the storytelling, knowledge resources allow me to make insights more relevant, actionable and clear. To make my stories more influential I always find it very useful to compare insights & business recommendations with other markets, regions or brands, using both external sources and internal studies.

Talking about hands-on knowledge resources, it’s important to remember that they don’t need to come outside of organization and can also include research conducted by teams in other markets, for other brands or even some previous studies which can give ideas on trends & shifts.

Below I provide a snapshot of a knowledge file which can be used by Analytics & Insights teams, and shared with diverse multifunctional team members.

An important watch-out here, it’s extremely important to fully understand and evaluate critically these research resources before you start using them for your business decisions. It should be done especially in terms of research methodologies & methods used, study limitations and its reapplication potential.

I should also admit that such kind of knowledge files is only one part of the journey that aims to build holistic understand of business environment, and it’s critical to have strong empathy with consumers. I shared an example on how to do this in the post Transform your Consumer Empathy with the Use of Mobile which is based on my presentation at Marketing Research in Mobile World Conference.