Food and Beverage
TEAM MEMBERS
Strauss sought our help to develop the team’s infrastructure by building mechanisms, processes, and defining the Business Partner Research role to maximize the unit’s impact on the organization.
As a result of our “research on research,” the research BP now has a clearly defined understanding and structure for her newly designed role. The head and founder of this insights unit also has a stronger grasp of how the unit should operate. Finally, the success of the project has opened the door to continue with onboarding the remaining team members of the insights unit into the defined operational model.
We collected in-depth user insights from qualitative interviews, analyzed a research case study, and conducted a workshop to develop the right tools for the new role. Since the role is designed as if her colleagues are her customers, we translated our methods so we could find solutions from an organizational (internal) standpoint.
Taking a human-centric approach, we utilized Q’s interdisciplinary methods to build a questionnaire for the interviews that we held with five marketing managers across four business units. The goal of these interviews was to understand what their expectations and optimal experience would be when working alongside the Business Partner. With all the data and properly framed questions we were able to devise aroadmap for the employee to succinctly review and hand over any third party research to the business units in an efficient manner.
We utilized a real case of existing concept research results from the company to create a case study and review the real-time process. Finally, we led a workshop with the employee and her direct manager (founder of the unit), to share our findings and to jointly develop the tools and solutions for any gaps we identified.
We found that the biggest risk this role faces is becoming purely a middleman between external research companies and the internal business units. Rather than disseminating information, this position is expected by its partners to operate in a “push and pull” manner - to “push” external value to the various units and to “pull” the real needs and strategic priorities from each unit.
By reviewing one of the company’s concept research results, we developed a case study that allowed us to outline both the business unit’s and Business Partner’s separate “journeys” and their touchpoints. In this case, the customer is the business unit which commissioned the research.
As a result of the workshop with the unit’s manager and BP, we created a visual journey and defined the four main points where the Business Partner Research employee could use new tools to deliver the expected impact to her customers (Strauss’ business units). This provided her with the structure she needs to operate on a daily basis.
With the customer journey outlined and her approach clearly detailed, we concluded with a major insight, namely: her roleis viewed, by her customers (the business units of Strauss), as a management role. This means that she is expected to see any research from the unit’s point of view, while also serving as an outsider research unit member. Furthermore, she is expected to integrate information from adjacent departments.
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