How We Add Value

At DJS Research, we believe that we add value in a variety of ways. At the end of the day, 'added value' is a term that is easy to use, but not as easy to demonstrate or put into practice. In short, it is a term that is much abused. Below, we demonstrate how we can add value to any project that you chose to conduct with us:

• Process Driven Added Value

• Financial Added Value

• Demonstrating the Value of Research

• Consultancy Services

Taking each of these in turn:

Process Driven Added Value
At DJS Research, we do not believe in pigeon holing your research into an off the shelf package. In short, we will always:

• Aim to understand both your business and research objectives, to ensure that the research meets both

• Write a proposal suggesting a methodology which meets your needs, and would work in your industry

• Tell you if we disagree with any assumptions that you have made (for example, if you come to us asking us if we can provide a cost for group discussions, but we do not feel that this approach would work in your market, we will tell you this rather than waste your money)

• Ask questions. We are research specialists, and have industry sector knowledge. We do not propose to be specialists in every product area, and as such pride ourselves in our ability to ask the right questions to allow us to get underneath your product. Ultimately, this means that we are able to talk at a level with both you and your customers/potential customers

• Provide you with director level involvement at every stage of your research project. Many agencies will provide senior contacts who will top and tail a project, leaving the project management itself and writing of the presentation to a junior. We do not do this, and feedback shows that this is a service that our clients like. Rest assured that at any stage of the project, senior people know what is happening, and you have the benefit of their experience on a project

• Provide you with the confidence that project managers are able to converse on a level with senior people within your organisation. Our research directors have extensive experience of presenting findings to senior level audiences worldwide

Financial Added Value
As we are a small consultancy, we have none of the overheads of a large company. This means that we can pass on cost savings directly to you in the form of cost effective research.

However, cheaper does not mean lower quality at DJS Research. Every project will be run by an experienced Research Director with more than 10 years experience. This means that you get senior level involvement to go with more affordable research.

Demonstrating The Value Of Research
We are aware that it can be difficult to sell the benefits of research internally within a company. This is often because it can be difficult to demonstrate a direct link between the research and return on investment. Traditionally, research has not always been valued for its role in this area.

At DJS Research, we can help you to sell the benefit of research internally by thinking around your company situation, and how you will use the research results. We can do this in a variety of ways:

Front End Workshops
Workshops at the start of a project can be tailored towards getting people on-board with the research. In a workshop situation, we can take time to explain the thinking behind the research, methodology and talk to people involved about the market situation, thus ensuring that their views are taken into account. These workshops can also be used in a variety of other ways:

• A chance to ask questions - an opportunity for others who will use the research results to check that it will be useful to them

• To familiarise the commissioning company with the research company conducting the research. In many of the markets that we work in, we represent our clients when talking to customers/potential customers. We often find that individuals in the company that commission the research wants to meet the people who will be doing the research, and who will be talking to their customers (to reassure them that they are qualified to do the job)

• An opportunity to 'kick start' the research. For example, if you wish to conduct a quantitative study but are not sure what to measure, we would typically recommend a qualitative study upfront to help define this. However if budget is an issue, by creatively thinking around this, we can use a internal workshop to brainstorm the research and pool all known information to generate question areas

Back End Workshops - Similarly, we can use backend workshops to disseminate research findings, tailoring the results by audience (for example, topline figures for board members, more detail for staff on the ground). We also use back end workshops to:

• Help organisations to set action plan and prioritise actions - by setting actions assigned to individuals, you avoid the research getting put in a cupboard and not being used, thus putting its value into action

Helping you to sell the financial value of the research - If you can provide to us key figures on customer numbers, churn rates etc, we can help you to put together figures which will help to 'demonstrate' the value of market research (return on investment) Consider the following example:

Example: A mobile company has 13 million customers needing 500,000 repairs a year. Satisfaction with the repair service is low and they want to find out why. However, they don't really want to spend much. One way of looking at value is as follows (intelligent guesswork):

Company has 13 million mobile phone customers needing 500,000 repairs a year

Under 4% of the customer base

BUT - the repair service is one of the few touch points with the customer. If you can increase satisfaction here, you could reduce churn (which is also a big issue for the company)

Churn rate is around 25% per yr

A good experience could reduce this by 10%

A bad experience could increase this to 30%

So the difference between good and bad could mean 50,000 more customers a year stay

If a customer stays on average 4 years, and spend on average £300 per annum then a lost customer is worth £1200

So improving from bad to good could be worth £60million (for the sake of a 50k project!)

Consultancy Services
In the past, DJS Research consultants have been involved in working outside the traditional remit of research in a number of ways:

Working alongside a client's advertising and branding agencies - we have worked alongside such companies, fitting research into the needs of an ad or branding campaign, working alongside them

Commenting on marketing communications which have been developed using research results, and working alongside advertising agencies on these

Commenting on marketing plans

Conducting training in market research

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