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Welcome to today’s podcast! In today’s special episode, Sima continues her conversation with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata in the second part of the exciting two-part interview.
In this episode, Gary and Sima continue with their discussion about the things that influence the size of opportunity within the industry and discuss whether doing things faster will denigrate the research process. They also talk about standardizing the data-collection process, acquisitions, integration, and culture.
The size of the opportunity for the entire Industry
Up until now, many people have defined the size of the market research industry at around 80 billion dollars worldwide. However, the advancement of technology is bringing more players and different buying audiences into the space. Gary believes that two things drive the number: the changes that are going on within traditional market research from a technological standpoint and the marketing services ecosystem, which Gary sees as being continuous.
The work that gets done in market research
Gary believes that market research is inextricably connected to lead and demand generation, CRM, and advertising. And the work that gets done in market research is ultimately to understand someone so that some behavior, purchase, or customer relationship can get driven. Gary believes the data that drives the decisions at the start should be the underlying or first-party data that drives the execution of those ideas. If you can keep that data consistent along that continuum, you will reduce the opportunities for getting it wrong.
An order of magnitude
Gary thinks there is an order of magnitude of size and opportunity in market research. And the rest of the marketing services spectrum is another order of magnitude on top of that. Gary estimates the total value to be a couple of trillion dollars, which is very exciting!
Agile research
The introduction of agile research into the industry has allowed Gary and his team to address the challenges in they could not reach previously.
Will faster denigrate the research process?
Gary believes that market researchers have to be fast, ask the right questions, and have a sound methodology and diverse representation. They should also ensure the fidelity of a given project.
Value proposition
Dynata’s value proposition will always be to provide the highest quality first-party data to drive their outcomes. They will not drop that in the pursuit of speed or any other metric that adjusts to the changing market dynamics.
Standardizing data
As an industry, we have not made the progress we need, so Gary thinks that standardizing the way data gets collected for market research is vital.
Acquisition
Dynata makes its acquisitions in one of two ways. If they want to expand their data asset or the capabilities surrounding it, they look for businesses in geographies where they might be under-represented, like the African continent. They look for companies and assets that would help them to build out their insights platform.
Insights platform
Dynata launched their insights platform a couple of years ago with the idea of having one place for their clients to come to do everything from accessing their data to performing the entire set of market research activities related to their data. They have been working toward arranging all the puzzle pieces to ensure the platform is a complete offering for their clients. Dynata hired third-parties to achieve integration with their acquired companies and to create value.
Culture
Gary points out that a shared purpose binds people together and wants to ensure the strategy and direction they have chosen at Dynata is the best it can possibly be.
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