Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

Sima is happy to have Jim Longo joining her today! Jim is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Discuss.

Jim has had an amazing career in the research sector! He talks to Sima about his journey, how he got to where he is in his career, and the benefits of digital qualitative research. He also gets into the features they built at Discuss to improve efficiency and direct analysis.

Jim’s background

Jim got involved in qualitative research early on in his career. He joined Harris Interactive in 1999 when the internet was already going strong. They brought Jim in to digitize qualitative research. He wanted to introduce video because it allowed him to see people’s reactions and body language when in conversation. At every other organization he joined after leaving Harris, he continued to push for the ability to use video, even though the video quality was poor back then.

Discuss

Discuss is a tech company that understands qualitative research and has its roots in research. They work with brands, corporate researchers, and their agencies.

Engaging with your target audience

When Jim and his co-founder got together, they started looking for a way to leverage technology to scale qualitative research. They did some research and learned that being engaged with your target audience and customers mattered. The idea of doing video came up. So they built something specifically for research and incorporated some unique features to make things easier and involve more people in the research process.

Technology and automation 

They managed to prove to the marketplace that it is possible to scale qualitative research by leveraging technology and automation.

Keyword search

Jim and his partner built the ability to synchronize the video to a transcript. Now, it is possible to do a keyword search on their platform (and others). They subsequently added a tagging capability too, which helps with analysis.

Travel 

Using video has allowed people to save a lot on travel expenses.

More exposure

Video has given exposure to more people to participate in the research process.

Bringing qual to the surface

Video brings qualitative research to the surface and gets people excited!

Making qualitative research easier, and less costly

If the cost of doing qualitative research gets reduced, and research sessions are easier to set up, people are more likely to want to use it. Jim describes that as a strategy of customer closeness or customer connects.

Understanding people at the human level

Jim’s work is valuable because it helps researchers understand people at the human level.

Asynchronous

When consumers have the freedom to do a task or record something related to an experience without being in a virtual focus group or an IDI, that is known as asynchronous.

Getting answers faster

Jim is always thinking of ways to compress the timeline for finding answers when his customers or clients ask a business question.

Digital qualitative research participants

Right now, people are looking for connection. So when they participate in digital qualitative research, they enjoy knowing that they are being heard and someone is interested in them.

A benefit of digital research

Jim points out that with digital research, researchers will get the answers they are looking for, and in many instances, they can make decisions without having to travel anywhere.

 

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Welcome to another engaging and informative episode of Data Gurus!

Sima is delighted to have Raj Bains, the CEO and Founder at Prophecy, joining her for today’s show!

Raj started Prophecy five years ago and decided to build one big product to get data ready for analytics. He talks to Sima about his business and product and where he fits within the industry.

Raj’s background

Raj started his professional career in the early 2000s. He started with graphics, worked as a developer, got into power tools, and worked at Microsoft. After that, he joined a team at NVIDIA to build CUDA, which now gets used for Bitcoin mining. Then he moved into the data space and shifted from engineering into marketing and product management. While selling big data platforms and managing Apache Hive for the Hadoop Company at Hortonworks, he saw data users struggling to be productive with outdated tools. He solved that problem by building power tools to make it easy to get data ready for analytics very quickly. He has focused on doing that since then.

Prophecy

Raj started Prophecy in 2017 to build a visual tooling layer to get data ready for analytics. Data scientists, data analysts, and data engineers can use the tool to avoid having to do unnecessary work.

Standardization

There is a big problem with standardization within large organizations when it comes to building data pipelines.

The problem with unstandardized codes 

In the past, people within the industry used to write scripts. Then they started using standardized visual tools. After that, they moved to the cloud, but nobody wanted to get locked into that tool, so they got rid of the visual development tools and started using codes. The codes within companies are unstandardized, however, so everyone’s code looks different. That has led to many different problems.

A solution

Prophecy’s clients do visual drag-and-drop development, and Raj and his team write high-quality code for them. That has opened people up to returning to visual development and allowed much more standardization within the industry.

Building a solution

Raj and his team started working with a few big credit card companies and banks. Then they spent two or three years building their product. They still have a year or two of building ahead of them, but they have reached a point where they can solve the entire problem for companies using their product.

An enterprise standard

They have created an enterprise standard for all lines of business, where data analysts, data engineers, and everyone else within a company use the same tool and speak the same language.

Data pipelines

Prophecy makes it quick and easy for companies to build data pipelines. Data pipelines are essential for analytics because they provide the necessary information for asking intelligent questions. The data has to be high-quality, timely, and in the right shape to answer questions quickly.

The future

Raj believes that they will solve the issues with data management within the next three to five years.

Bio:  

Raj is the founder & CEO of Prophecy. Previously, Raj led project management of Apache Hive at Hortonworks through their IPO. He also headed product management and marketing for a NewSQL database startup.

Raj continues to actively develop compiler and database technologies in his quest to create data tools “that don’t suck.” His engineering roles include developing a NewSQL database, building CUDA at NVIDIA as a founding engineer, and as a compiler engineer working on Microsoft Visual Studio.

 

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Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus!  

Sima is excited to have Florian Kahlert, the Chief Data, and Innovation Officer at Telmar, joining her on the show today.

Florian recently sold his company, Helixa, to Telmar. In this episode, he gets into the benefits of the integration between Helixa and Telmar and discusses competition, data protection, data sharing, and privacy.

Florian’s story

Florian has been oscillating between data and ad tech, and the research side of the industry throughout his career. He has worked at several different companies over the last two decades. He ran Helixa until it got acquired by Telmar at the end of last year.

Helixa

There are two parts to how Helixa fits into the overall data landscape:

Transforming data (observational data, social data, etc.) into understanding what people’s interests are.

Fulilling the need within the industry for accurate and detailed personas and definitions of audiences, segments, etc., that go beyond demographics and lifestyles to address their product advertising and their product development needs in a fragmented market.

Better decisions

When you have a data set of hundreds of thousands of influencers, it is hard to figure out which part of your audience goes to which influencer. A lot of detailed information is required to make the right decisions. Helixa builds those audiences in rich and granular detail to help their clients understand more about them and make better decisions.

Understanding the competition

Helixa also assists their clients strategically, by helping them understand what their competitors’ consumers are doing so they can position themselves similarly or differently.

Telmar

Telmar is a traditional company that has been innovative in supporting media and advertising agencies on the media planning side.

Adding value

At Telmar, they process a vast number of data sets on behalf of their clients. They are good at adding value to the data they process.

Where Helixa and Telmar match 

Helixa is on the side of audience intelligence, and Telmar is on the media intelligence side of understanding media information and planning. Together, they provide clients with far more streamlined solutions.

Uncertainty

Covid has shown that companies react early on and quickly to uncertainty in terms of their cash management and how they control unnecessary expenditure. People have become more cautious with their budgets and spending decisions.

A global company

Telmar is a company that operates globally. The requirements for what they need to do in the UK versus what they need to do in the US are very different. Generally, they lean towards what works in the UK because when things work in the EU, they tend to work everywhere else.

Privacy

We are at a point where conversations about privacy are starting to happen on a consumer level. We will see continuous changes that could affect data companies and companies that deal with data.

Protective behavior

Many companies are currently protecting their data to maintain their competitive edge.

Florian’s long-term concern 

Being part of a consumer company that works with data, Florian constantly worries that data will be generated from fewer and fewer sources in the future. Privately owned data sources have advertising models, so they may not always be willing to make their data available to help companies make decisions. He is concerned that that might impact how we understand the world through data.

Bio:

Florian Kahlert

Chief Data & Innovation Officer

Florian built his career at the intersection of Digital Advertising and MarTech and its applications for Market Research. In addition to his experience running research companies, he has been instrumental in growing startup companies.

In addition to his experience running research companies (including GfK MRI), he has been instrumental in growing startup companies in the Online Media and Marketing Technology and Research Insights industry, including Helixa (acquired by Telmar), Dimestore Media (acquired by GfK), Right Media (acquired by Yahoo!) and InsightExpress (acquired by WPP).

Florian holds a patent for online survey sample collection. As Adjunct Professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, he taught digital marketing topics, and he published in numerous publications, including the Journal of Advertising Research, Advertising Age, and Broadcasting and Cable. In 2015 he was featured in Survey Magazine as one of “20 Researchers You Need to Know”

 

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Florian Kahlert on LinkedIn

Telmar

Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus!

Sima is excited to bring you the second part of the live discussion between herself and four other industry leaders that took place earlier this year at SampleCon.

This episode might give those who did not make it to SampleCon this year an idea of what the conference was like, and hopefully bring a fresh perspective to those who were there. You will hear Sima lead an informal and unscripted discussion with Ryan Barry, Steve Schlesinger, Katie Gross, and Armen Adjemian. They share their opinions on various topics and discuss their concerns for the industry.

Ryan Barry is the President at Zappi. He oversees their commercial operations, operations, and product and engineering groups.

Steve Schlesinger is the CEO of Schlesinger Group. He focuses on strategy, acquisitions, and developing the business for the future.

Armen Adjemian is a co-founder and CEO of DISQO. He is involved with strategy and marketing.

Katie Gross is Chief Customer Officer at Suzy. She oversees sales, customer success, and their Full Service Center of Excellence team.

Sima Vasa is a co-founder of Paradigm Sample and CEO of Infinity Squared Ventures. She also does investment banking for Oberon Securities.

What concerns Steve?

Companies can grow from a startup to great success a lot faster now. So Steve worries about the companies that will grow significantly in a short period and represent large amounts of revenue in three to five years. He is concerned about his blind spots and the things he doesn’t know.

What Katie worries about

Katie worries about Ted Talks, Twitter, and people who take time and attention from respondents.

Creating better value

DISQO’s main growth constraint is the member or user. So they think about how the changes that occur in their users’ lives will affect their attention span. They are always thinking of ways to create better value for their users, and they always gravitate to the member experience because that drives growth.

The data war

Ryan worries about who will win the data war inside big businesses. Because 67% of the media spend of most companies is done programmatically now. Also, most consumer insights departments are still analog and disconnected from a lot of performance optimization.

Connecting what people do with what they say

Ryan feels that if researchers could connect what people do with what they say, they only will need to ask them two questions. However, people in the industry are not thinking about that. So he worries about what insights departments will look like five years from now.

Doing things differently

According to earnings reports, many CEOs are responsible for the idea of doing things differently. Ryan feels that much of the drive toward transformation is happening at the level of the CMO and Chief Growth Officer.

Change within traditional insights organizations

Sima believes the need to transform and move faster has driven much of the change within traditional insights organizations.

From the top down

Katie thinks some companies have done a great job of starting from the top down and enabling everyone.

The hardest thing

Armen feels that selling to insights teams over time is the hardest thing because it is difficult to prove ROI from that spend.

Fintech

Something interesting about fintech, compared with a more traditional CPG, is that the number of buyers within fintech groups is many times more than the number of buyers within more traditional insights departments.

Creators

Ryan believes that creators are underserved in terms of data. They are the future and need data to inspire them and help them make better decisions. He views insights people as creators because they are part of the process.

The digital market

Ryan thinks that the digital market is becoming a lot bigger.

Global shifts

The world is becoming more data-driven. So everyone, regardless of position, is expected to make decisions based on real data. The world is also getting more customer-obsessed.

Opportunity for growth

Armen feels there is a lot of opportunity for growth within enterprise markets.

Enabling creators

Ryan hopes insights departments will enable creators to get the data they require.

Data is everywhere

Steve feels that data is everywhere. Yet we cannot see where it is or where we could be working. He also thinks that data is in different places now than it was a decade or two before. So we need to find ways to access it and make it available for those who need it.

People processing

The insights industry does not have a technology problem. However, there is a big problem with people processing.

The industry will become more tech-enabled

Right now, 53% of the industry is tech-enabled. Sima feels that it will definitely become more tech-enabled by 2025.

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Ryan Barry on Twitter

Ryan Barry on LinkedIn

Steve Schlesinger on LinkedIn

Katie Gross on LinkedIn

Armen Adjemian on LinkedIn

Welcome to another interesting and informative episode of Data Gurus!

Sima is excited to bring you part of a live discussion between herself and four other industry leaders that took place earlier this year, at SampleCon.

For those who did not get to SampleCon this year, this episode will give you an idea of what it was like. You will hear Sima lead an informal and unscripted discussion with Ryan Barry, Steve Schlesinger, Katie Gross, and Armen Adjemian. They share their strong opinions on various topics, including leadership, talent management, company culture, respondent experience, and more.

Ryan Barry is the President at Zappi. He oversees their commercial operations, operations, and product and engineering groups.

Steve Schlesinger is the CEO of Schlesinger Group. He focuses on strategy, acquisitions, and developing the business for the future.

Armen Adjemian is a co-founder and CEO of DISQO. He is involved with strategy and marketing

Katie Gross is Chief Customer Officer at Suzy. She oversees sales, customer success, and their Full Service Center of Excellence team.

Sima Vasa is a co-founder of Paradigm Sample and CEO of Infinity Squared Ventures. She also does investment banking for Oberon Securities.

Talent

Everyone is trying to figure out how to acquire, hire, and retain talent.

Even though there are currently many conversations about technology and automation, Steve feels that it is the talent that generates the value of the business. So people have to be more creative than ever to attract people into their businesses. His company regularly looks at acquisitions as a way to get talent.

Katie joined Suzy almost two years ago. Hiring has been nearly a full-time job for her because Suzy needs people with experience and people with different points of view.

Working from home

It is difficult for parents to raise their children and work. Working from home has been helpful for females in the workplace and brought more balance to many families with working parents.

The best team

DISQO has been very people-centric across time because Armen believes that whoever has the best team in the long term will win. Remote hiring has allowed them to hire faster.

Doubling their staff

DISQO doubled its staff by bringing in more than 200 people last year. It was extremely challenging to do in the current environment.

Investments

Last year, Sima saw a lot of activity in what was said to be a frothy market. Now, there appears to be more scrutiny and caution around investments. Expectations also seem to be more realistic.

Debt financing

Zappi has gained much traction from debt financing over the last several years. Ryan believes that debt financing is a useful vehicle for growing companies.

High salaries

Salaries are costing a lot more. That could become a problem if the numbers do not get met.

Performance

At the end of the day, investment is about performance.

Culture

It can be difficult for a company to retain its culture in tough times. It helps to have a good environment, hire great people, and treat them like adults. Having open conversations about what the company is going through is also vital.

Adapting and changing

The culture has to adapt and change as a company grows.

Complex culture

Steve has a culture of 20 companies amalgamated together. Each company came in with its culture, so the current culture is a complex combination of those.

Culture and people

Culture and people are the most important criteria for a company.

Shared values

Shared values are vital for a cultural fit within a company.

Respondent experience

Market researchers should not support 45-minute conjoint surveys any longer because most people only have a seven-minute attention span.

Representative sample

The industry has defined representative sample as age, gender, and income. That, and some other industry basics, need to change.

A challenge

The industry is facing a challenge in that it is constrained by the audience.

Data transfer

Katie believes that the issue of audience constraint could have been solved some time ago if data could be transferred via the API.

Brand interaction

Armen feels that the macro issue is that most companies that create solutions for people do not interact directly with the brands. That is an ecosystem issue.

Controlling the respondent's experience

Companies integrated with brands get to control the respondent experience in the ecosystem. However, there is also another population that cannot necessarily control the survey experience with respondents.

 

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Ryan Barry on Twitter

Ryan Barry on LinkedIn

Steve Schlesinger on LinkedIn

Katie Gross on LinkedIn

Armen Adjemian on LinkedIn

Welcome to another engaging and informative episode of Data Gurus!

Today, Sima is happy to have Wes Michael, the Founder and President of Rare Patient Voice, joining her!

Wes founded Rare Patient Voice in 2013 to give patients and caregivers with rare diseases the opportunity to voice their opinions in research studies. In this episode, he explains what prompted him to start Rare Patient Voice. He also talks about how he has grown the business and what they do.

Wes’s story

After graduating, Wes worked for a computer consulting company that did surveys. Then he returned to school to get an MBA and learn about statistics. After that, he worked at General Mills for a few years and learned about market research. He then moved to McCormick, a spice company in Maryland.

A big change

There was a change in the healthcare world in the nineties when direct-to-consumer ads were made legal. Wes moved into that world when he joined Kantar Health (then known as Migliara/Kaplan). He dealt with companies like Merck, Pfizer, and BMS, which knew everything about marketing to physicians but nothing about TV advertising to mass markets. Wes found it interesting to see those companies move from doing physician research only to doing patient research.

Rare diseases

One of Wes’s first clients was one of the few thousand people in the entire country in the hemophilia space. That company asked Wes to create a panel to help market their hemophiliac treatment product.

The National Hemophilia Foundation Conference 

Wes went to the National Hemophilia Foundation conference and explained market research. People signed up to do interviews and surveys. After that, they went back every year to recruit more people.

A business idea 

A few years later, a client from a different pharmaceutical company in the hemophilia space asked Wes if they could access his patient panel. That gave Wes the idea to create a panel of people with hemophilia and other diseases and start a business to make it available to multiple companies.

Rare Patient Voice 

When Wes founded his Company, Rare Patient Voice, nine years ago, he started working with the hemophiliac community. He looked at other areas of interest, like multiple sclerosis, later.

Referral bonus

Patients know other patients. So Wes started offering a referral bonus to people who referred others to do his surveys.

Cancer patients

Wes did not want to work with cancer patients initially. However, after being inundated with requests from cancer patients, he started working together with David Wasilewski, the creator of WhatNext.com, the social health website of the American Cancer Society. It was a win-win situation for both of them, and it got Wes started with multiple diseases.

Hiring more people

As the demand increased, Wes hired more people. Then an MS patient from Colorado offered to help and started creating patient events in Colorado. After a while, Wes had fifty people from around the country going to patient events and spreading the word. That eventually became a source of full-time employees.

Advocacy groups

Many advocacy groups have partnered with Rare Patient Voice.

Competition

They are competitive and like to win. Even so, Wes likes to think that there are no losers. Some of their competitors are also their clients because even though they have panels, they still don’t have enough to achieve what Rare Patient Voice has done.

Patients

With every survey, patients get the chance to give some feedback. Wes loves to read out their comments in their monthly meetings.

Referral pay-outs

Since its inception, Rare Patient Voice has paid more than $9,000,000 for referrals!

Other research firms

Most of the work Rare Patient Voice does is with other research firms. They are also happy to deal directly with pharma companies, but those companies usually prefer to have a firewall between themselves and the patients.

Expanding their horizons

When Wes started his company, he assumed that non-rare disease needs were being met by the big panels and decided to focus on rare diseases only. Then he discovered that many patients have multiple conditions. So he resolved not to refuse anyone.

Helping others

Many of the patients Wes works with are very ill. Yet they still like to do surveys because they feel they could be helpful to others with the same disease.

The future

Wes is working on expanding his business into Europe. He is also considering including other revenue streams, like clinical trials, in the future. 

Bio: WES MICHAEL: Founder and President, Rare Patient Voice

Wes Michael founded Rare Patient Voice in 2013 to give patients and caregivers with rare diseases the opportunity to voice their opinions in research studies.

Rare Patient Voice has now conducted thousands of studies and rewarded patients and caregivers with over $9 million for their participation. Many have been recruited in person by Wes and his team at patient events like fund-raising walks and patient conferences, and through a referral program with patient advocacy and support groups. Rare Patient Voice now covers non-rare as well as rare diseases and conditions and has expanded from the United States to Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand.

Before launching Rare Patient Voice, Wes worked for the healthcare market research firm Kantar Health. He previously was a brand manager and market research manager at McCormick (the spice company) and General Mills (working on Wheaties, Total, and Kix cereals). He has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania (with a year at Edinburgh University) and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Wes lives outside Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Cathy, children Julia and Cliff, grandson Taylor, and dogs Ace and Stanley.

 

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Rare Patient Voice

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Rare Patient Voice on Twitter

Welcome to the Data Gurus podcast!

Sima has selected some interesting and educative past episodes of Data Gurus for you to enjoy in the last few weeks of August. She will return in September with new guests, fresh content, and a few surprises!

Today’s episode is a replay of episode 155 with Lilah Raynor, the Founder, and CEO of Logica Research.

In this episode, Lilah talks to Sima about a research project she did with a team from the IDEA Council and discusses an ongoing study she is involved in, called The Future of Money.

Lilah’s background

Lilah comes from a financial services background. Before founding Logica Research, she managed the research team at Charles Schwab.

Founding Logica Research

Lilah founded Logica Research about fifteen years ago. It was initially called Koski Research. She started her company to provide excellent client service for clients who preferred working with small boutique research firms. Over time, they have become more niche-focused on financial services and fintech.

Making a change 

Owning her own business allowed Lilah to have more flexibility while raising her two young children. It also allowed her to work on different projects and do different types of research.

Research around hot topics

Lilah participated in and conducted some research to help the research industry understand how to ask questions around ethnicity, race, and gender.

The IDEA Council

The Insights Association has a group called the IDEA Council that has within it two working groups. One does research on research, and the other focuses more on the profession and talent.

The IDEA Council’s research on research group

Lilah got involved in the IDEA Council’s research on research group because the purpose of her company is to provide insights for organizations to help improve people’s financial lives. After the murder of George Floyd, and with more focus on inclusion and diversity within the research industry, she wanted to be in a position to provide sample and participants that were both inclusive and diverse.

A white paper

Lilah and the team at the IDEA Council created a white paper on having more inclusive demographic questions. They focused on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

The first step

The white paper is the first step in an ongoing series of research studies. It was done to provide a perspective and recommendations on how to ask demographic questions, how to be more sensitive and inclusive when asking demographic questions, and how to use new questions in their sample design.

A three-tiered approach recommendation

They came up with a three-tiered approach recommendation for asking questions about gender and sex.

Non-binary

Non-binary has not yet been properly defined or researched, so it might not be clear to older generations.

Caution and encouragement

Caution has been recommended when using terms that might not have universal definitions. The option for self-identification with an open end is encouraged.

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation needs to be differentiated from gender. So they offer suggestions for different ways to ask questions about sexual orientation.

Demographic questions

Demographic questions should be handled in a sensitive way, similar to questions about household income, assets, or money.

Race and ethnicity

There is a large section in the white paper on asking questions about race and ethnicity. It has recommendations for different ways in which those questions can be asked. The white paper also identifies terms for race and ethnicity, country of origin, ancestry, culture.

USA

The recommendations in the white paper are based on and geared for the United States.

Race

Questions about race should be asked in a sensitive and open-ended way. Having an inclusive and sensitive coding framework is also recommended.

Multiple selection and self-identification

Allowing for multiple selection and self-identification are also recommended.

Where do you find the white paper?

The white paper can be found on the Insights Association IDEA Council website.

The Future of Money

Lilah is also involved with an ongoing study on the financial and economic uncertainty and stress caused by the pandemic called The Future of Money. Since the pandemic, people have become much more open to talking about money.

Employees are looking for guidance from their employers

Right now, employers are in a place where they need to look at different ways to help their employees. Insights show that people want more than just a 401K, health care insurance, and competitive compensation. They also require investment and financial advice, an emergency savings fund, and help with budgeting.

Are we heading for a cashless society?

People have been using less cash since the start of the pandemic, and also different forms of payments like peer-to-peer, in-app payment options, and autofill payments at online checkouts. We will most likely only go cashless in the distant future, however.

 

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Logica Research

Welcome to the Data Gurus podcast!

Sima has curated several illuminating and informative past Data Gurus episodes for you to enjoy in the last weeks of August. She will be back again in September with fresh content, new guests, and a few surprises!

Today’s episode is a replay of episode 147, in which Sima shared Part 1 of Investing in Research, a panel discussion about agencies from the WiRe (Women in Research) Conference that took place last year.

The discussion is hosted by Nikki Lavoie, and experts Sima Vasa, Sherry Fox, and Elaine Riddel join her to talk about a prominent myth circulating in the insights industry. According to that myth, only tech and SaaS-based companies receive investment funding.

In this discussion, the panel of experts clarifies why that myth is false and explains how service-based companies can start accessing investment funding.

The experts 

Sherry Fox is a career Global Insights Strategist focused on health care. She is well-versed in strategic brand development and regulatory environments. Sherry is an industry expert and futuristic thinker who can facilitate collaborations leading to the growth and acquisition of service companies. She has also founded future health strategies to leverage the intersection of data, insights, and technology.

Sima Vasa is a multi-faceted business leader in the market research and analytics space with a broad range of expertise from P&L management, operations, business development, marketing, entrepreneurship, and investment banking. Currently, Sima focuses on advising clients on overall business strategy, valuation of strategic options, and execution of investment banking mandates through Oberon Securities, a middle-market-focused investment banking firm.

Elaine Riddel is a growth activist who believes that breakthrough potential exists in every company. She unlocks potential by anticipating market changes that will influence client priorities and then building organizational confidence to deliver new value. As A CEO, she transformed mature, stagnant, global insights firms into scalable market leaders that consistently out-performed the market over fifteen years. Her playbook is the foundation for her growth advisories, serving founders, CEOs, and PE firms. Elaine is currently an MD with Oaklins Da Silva and Phillips, a leading investment bank for marketing and media services.

Why is there the myth that service-based companies cannot get funding?

Sima believes that service-based companies can get investment capital if they want it. It is all about the valuation of a service-based company, compared with a more Saas or tech-enabled company. Investors want to invest in good, financially sound companies that provide their clients with a strong value and serve their markets well. So the question is really around the value of the company.

Elaine thinks that everything has its time. Automating much of the back office and the DIY will result in better, faster, and cheaper kinds of foundational services. We are moving into a time where more people with more advanced decision-making capabilities are needed to advise clients.

Sherry believes that even with the arrival of big data and AI being used more in the insights industry, people are still necessary to deliver the insights to the pointer lane because you cannot rely on the data to explain why something is true. That is why service-based companies are needed more than ever right now to interpret the data.

Having insights translated into action

Elaine thinks that some service-based companies will stand out in terms of their areas of expertise because clients are looking for the expertise to translate insights into action with confidence in real-time.

Opportunities

Service-based companies should look for opportunities to syndicate or create multi-client services- on a subscription basis.

Reducing investor risk

Service-based companies need to reassure their investors that enough is being done to reduce the risk.

Becoming trusted advisors

Market research agencies should position themselves as strategic partners and collaborators with their clients to become their trusted advisors.

Actionability

Actionability is the key to creating value for service-based companies.

Reputation

Having a good reputation is a vital piece for companies looking for investors.

Visibility

Getting out there, being visible, and getting known is vital for winning business and finding investors.

A plan

Having a plan for the future demonstrates your value to potential investors.

Collaboration

Finding investors becomes easier for companies that get known for their collaborative style.

What CEOs and executives should consider before seeking investor funding

Be aligned with your current partners and know why you are seeking investors. Consider why now is a good time to do it. Also, understand that there will be a trade-off with your new investor partners. Make sure they align with your core values.

Driving growth

If you have a strong brand coupled with a great team and a vision you can use investment capital to build your business through inorganic growth.

When you are ready for investment

When you decide to look for investment, be ready to exchange business equity for capital to invest in your business. The first step is to meet with a professional advisor to help you think things through and get ready to go to market.

Take time 

It is worth taking the time to go through a proper process and prepare. That will help you gain confidence, allow you to showcase your business in the best light, and run a competitive process so that you can get the best options.

The best way to use funding capital

Use your capital on innovation solutions, marketing, and sales, to drive your business forward and grow it.

Enhancing customer experiences

Bringing data, insights, and technology together will help in creating an enhanced customer experience. That will attract investment in your company.

Think with the client in mind

Think with the client in mind. Consider the gaps you can see in the marketplace, do some research on your client base and the client community at large, and then find ways to solve their needs.

 

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Connect with Elaine Riddel at Oaklins da Silva, and Phillips

Welcome to the Data Gurus podcast! Sima has curated a series of interesting and informative past episodes of the podcast for August. She will be back again in September with new guests, fresh content, and a few surprises!

Today’s episode is a replay of episode 170 with Adam Jolley, the EVP and General Manager of Americas for Paradigm Sample.

In this episode, Adam talks to Sima about how leadership has had to change over the last two years as a result of how the world has changed since the pandemic.

Adam’s background

It was a shock for everyone when the pandemic hit. It was also a big shock to Adam’s career because he had quit his thirteen-year job as President of a stable company a few months before. At the time, he was navigating what to do for a career. He was also considering whether to get into leadership or be an individual contributor.

Having to change

If Adam had started with Paradigm immediately after quitting his old job, nothing would have changed, and he would not have gotten any better at what he did. Due to all the changes, including the influence of the change in the mindset of the employees, he had to change how he did everything.

A routine

Adam feels that before the pandemic, most people were in a routine. They were doing the same job repetitively, so they started getting lazy. People started becoming replaceable, and products became widgets and started becoming commoditized.

Competition for your people

Before, people had to think about competition in terms of market and product. Now, there is competition for people.

Sales

It is no longer possible to have a playbook for sales. Currently, there is no one way to manage, sell, or communicate with everybody because that would be limiting.

An opportunity for leaders

All the changes have created an opportunity for leaders to personalize their message and motivate their people to show up for work.

Customizing leadership

People learned more about each other when everyone started working remotely and communicating via Zoom. That helped Adam customize his approach to leadership.

How Adam changed personally after the pandemic

When making decisions, Adam stopped looking at what had happened and what was happening that day. He was forced to think differently about his goals, so he developed an emotional attachment to his job beyond the paycheck, insurance, and other benefits.

Teamwork

Adam was never a big believer in teamwork before. That has changed because everyone has gone through a hard time and a change together, and everyone needs acceptance.

Branding

With the change in leadership, there is more emphasis on branding. There is also more emphasis on companies because so much has changed.

Personal branding

Many leaders focus on their personal brand outside of the company. However, personal branding is just as important internally as it is externally.

Have your house in order

The most important part of a business is ensuring you have your own house in order before putting anything out there.

Leadership and embracing innovation

It is scary for people to innovate and have foresight, especially when things are going well. However, to move forward, innovation needs to be company-wide. Everyone, including the sales team, has to think about where things are going and what comes next.

A tough balance

Even though it is tough to balance, leaders must bring their people along throughout the innovation process.

A fine line

There is a fine line between taking market feedback, input from sales, input from marketing, and input from people building products, rationalizing what is important, why it is important, and getting everyone to agree about those decisions.

Culture

An interesting problem for leaders is when they see a company they would like to acquire, but it will not pass the road test for the executive team. Adam believes that is partly due to leaders misunderstanding what culture truly is.

Data-driven gambles

Adam’s company has taken on the culture of taking data-driven gambles. Before starting a new product or going after a new client, they do their due diligence. So they know whether or not it stands a good chance of working.

Diversity

Diversity is a big part of leadership and is vital for growth.

The Second Mountain

Adam’s thoughts about leadership were influenced by the book The Second Mountain. The book is about spending the first part of your career building yourself up to a place and the second part of your career bringing others up to where you are.

The next wave

Adam spent his first year getting core foundational salespeople who know their job and what they are doing. The next mountain will be about getting more sales opportunities, having accountability partners, thinking about getting people who have not worked for another sample company or in fieldwork, and how to get people excited about market research.

 

Links:

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Connect with Sima

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Infinity-2.com

 

Connect with Adam

Adam Jolley on LinkedIn

Paradigm Sample

 

Books mentioned

The Second Mountain by David Brooks

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Welcome to another informative episode of Data Gurus!

Sima is excited to have Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer for Alter Agents, joining her today to talk about the book she recently co-authored with Rebecca Brooks, called Influencing Shopper Decisions: Unleash the Power of Your Brand to Win Customers.

Devora’s book

In the book, Devora and Rebecca connect their journeys, careers, and their boss’s journeys with their historical perspectives to show people how market research has evolved, why it is the way it is today and things we need to rethink due to the way the world has changed.

Motivation

Devora and Rebecca have worked together as research partners since 2008. Early on in their working relationship, they began working on proving how emerging media was and would continue impacting purchasing decisions because that was not clear at that point. They wanted to give marketers a sense of the roles social media, mobile, or digital out-of-home were going to have on their marketing efforts.

Google

Fourteen years ago, Google started doing extensive and ground-breaking B2B studies to prove that people were using the internet to research products and buy things. That motivated Devora and Rebecca to begin their research.

The foundation of their work

The foundation of their work began with the idea that shoppers were doing more research than ever before.

Shopper promiscuity

Promiscuous behavior is about being open and unbound. Promiscuous readers, for example, will read anything. Davora and Rebecca began to see that behavior in shoppers too. They opened to brands, products, and content, in ways that never existed fifteen, ten, or even five years ago. They are also willing to switch brands- even after a lifetime commitment to a particular brand.

What is behind shopper promiscuity?

More information than ever before is accessible.

More people are consuming the information.

More innovation is happening.

There is no limit to what is available and when and where they are available.

We are surrounded by information and choices. That has impacted us by making us more promiscuous, more open to trying new things, and less loyal to brands.

An opportunity for brands to shift

Shopper promiscuity has allowed brands to shift to become content creators, PR specialists, and values-driven, and also express what they are committed to and what they are willing to stand up for.

Brand narcissism

In part of the book, they describe what brand narcissism is. (It is much like going on a date with a needy person, and it no longer meets the needs of shoppers who have changed fundamentally.)

Growing brands

For brands to continue growing, they need a platform for listening and an approach that allows them to be informed continually because the needs of consumers can change rapidly.

A shift in power

Retailers used to have all the power. Then, things shifted, and brands began to call the shots. Now, we have reached a point where shoppers hold all the power.

Source usage 

Source usage is a metric Davora and Rebecca created when trying to understand what people do before they buy something. It refers to the discreet touch-points people use at each phase of their buying process.

Net influence

Net influence calculates whether a particular source was influential for more people than it was not influential. It produces a quadrant chart that tells marketers where to find the most people or the right people they can influence to say “yes”. It also reveals the marketing campaigns of competitors’ brands.

Changing shopper values 

One way that shopper values are changing is that there is an overall increase in awareness of issues that impact the supply chain, manufacturing, and best practices as they relate to employee labor practices. Respect for shoppers’ data, and the safety of it, have been increasing over the past year as people become more knowledgeable. Those impacted by Covid are far more likely to rate the corporate social responsibility initiatives in terms of good brand behavior than those not affected by Covid. There has also been a bifurcation of shoppers. White-collar remote workers can spend more time researching, so they are more likely to change their minds about a brand if they uncover something they do not like.

 

Links:

Email me your thoughts!

LinkedIn

Twitter

Infinity-2.com

 

Connect with Devora

Devora Rogers on LinkedIn

Alter Agents

Visit https://www.koganpage.com/ and enter the discount code "KPFRIENDS" to receive 20% off of Influencing Shopper Decisions: Unleash the Power of Your Brand to Win Customers at checkout.