How to Optimize Your Market Research Reporting

If you’re in the market research industry, then you know how frustrating it can be to report data. With so many different data sources, it can be overwhelming to capture and monitor all of them in one place. Many enterprises build massive data warehouse that they then distribute to their users manually through PowerPoint. But is this really the best option for your market research reporting?

Managing Data Overload with Data Warehouses

If you’re going to take the data warehouse route, consider the following:

Your data has to be reformatted
The reporting process takes a lot of time and becomes very expensive
It requires a lot of IT involvement and consultant efforts
People start to create their own “systems” and you end up losing the point

All of the above requires a lot of tedious, time-consuming work. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to spend that time analyzing the data, rather than reporting it?

The Modern Solution to Market Research Reporting

Many market research companies such as TNS, DSS, and Kantar Media use online dashboards for their market research reporting. They simply build their dashboards in a drag & drop interface, using pre-built templates to create visually engaging designs. They add in their most important KPI’s, and easily distribute their dashboard to their enterprise and/or clients.

If you’re thinking of simplifying your reporting by using dashboards, then consider these 5 tips to optimize your reports:

Think Differently

Instead of starting your reporting by focusing on singular data sets, focus on the story. Every report has a story, and it’s important to define that first so that you can connect the dots across multiple data sets.

Inspire Action

The point of market research reporting is to gather information that will enable you to better your company. So based off of your dashboard report, you can define what actions need to be taken in order to better improve your company. For instance, in the dashboard below, you’ll see that Sales Call Requests are low. Based off of this information, you can immediately begin working on improving sales calls.

Identify Data Streams

Remember how your reports can get so overwhelming when you try to manage all of your different data streams? So keep it simple. Choose the select data streams that you want to report, whether it’s sales, social media, survey data, syndicated data, or more, and integrate them into one dashboard. Simple.

Define Your Objectives

Your company’s data is not for everyone, so choose exactly who sees what. For instance, you can tailor a dashboard so that C-Level members will only see your company’s marketing KPI’s, and the store manager will only see customer experience data. Allow specific team members to only see the story that is most important to them.