The papers are available on a diskette in Windows 95 at a cost of £25.00 plus VAT and £1.50 p+p. To order, please contact  David Cavalier [tel 020 8339 9217].

Session 1 - Effecting Cultural Change

The first session of the conference focused on the application of research to redirecting business strategies and improving competitive edge. Ruth McNeil chaired the session, introducing both subject and speaker with the insight and intimacy that comes from her years of experience in the industry.

Dr Roddy Hutchinson of BP Chemicals opened the session as a keynote speaker discussing his paper, "Driving Business Process Change - how does market research contribute?" Roddy is currently the Commercial Excellence Manager for the Polyethylene Europe business, and as such he has extensive experience in integrating market research findings to business strategies, particularly within the sphere of customer care and management, which was the focus of his talk.

Roddy's presentation was interesting and insightful as it demonstrated how market research has been actively applied to improve BP Chemicals' sales figures in the Polyethylene business. During his presentation, Roddy took the audience through BP Chemicals' customer satisfaction history, starting with their original focus on performance scores and culminating (quite recently) in a fresher and more innovative approach to customer relationship management. Through extensive research and experience, BP Chemicals have moved away from "trying to please all their customers" to concentrating their efforts on targeting a smaller group of profitable customers. This realignment has boosted their sales figures significantly in the past 4 years, and certainly mirrors current thinking in customer loyalty and retention.

Darren Noyce of i-magen gave the second talk of the session, stunning the audience with an elegant multi-media presentation of his paper "On-line Odyssey for Internal Insight".

The presentation informed us of the Web-based research that Darren is currently conducting on a quarterly basis for Vodaphone dealerships. Of particular interest were Darren's discussions of how to keep tracking questionnaires "alive" for the respondent, the high response rates that they have been maintaining, and how the information gained is filtered down the client organisation to each of the dealerships involved in the survey.

Darren has extensive experience in the latest technologies, and his knowledge and interest in the area was clearly evident in his presentation, which made use of video and audio clips from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" to deliver the message in an innovative manner.

The session was concluded by Hugh Ross of Market Planning International with a discussion of his paper, "Using Research to Create Customer Focus and Competitive Advantage." Hugh described how he and his client, AEA Technology (Environment) Plc used research to change the AEATE image from an "academic boffin" to a customer-focused business. He demonstrated clearly how companies that find themselves operating within a new climate can overcome circumstantial obstacles to enhance their image and competitive edge. AEATE is an environmental company that was formed through privatisation, and subsequently found themselves successful, but with "some way to go" on the image front. The research, conducted over a series of stages, has permitted AEATE to dramatically change its image and business culture, encouraging staff to be customer-focused, thus improving their competitive advantage.

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The second session contained two very different papers. The initial paper was presented jointly by Astrid Cooper (SIFO Consulting) and Mike Meadows of Ericsson. The focus of the paper was based on the SIFO performance measurement framework called MIA (Management of Intangible Assets). Mike outlined the Dialog model and its use within Ericsson, changing the emphasis of employee research to provide more of a customer focus. He pointed out that previously Ericsson had known how satisfied staff were and what was important. This approach led to cherry picking of projects to act on some of the easier issues to resolve.

Dialog was brought into help:

• Improve employee performance
• Create value for customers

The key drivers had to be identified and the link between staff attitude and improved business performance established. This meant measuring the following attributes:

• Empowerment
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Leadership

The programme operates using web-based technology and has so far achieved response rates of almost 80%. Two key indices have been established:

• Empowerment Index
• Human Capital Index

The key findings that Mike outlined were:

• The importance of leadersh
• Development of people
• Provision of stimulation, clear direction and goals
• Empowering people to drive Ericsson success

Mike also summarised the company's future plans including the linking of employee and customer data to provide a more complete picture.

Dave Spilsbury, MD of IFF, followed with a very different style of paper. Dave has worked closely with Kodak to establish an international customer database incorporating both company information and market research based information.

The approach used a web-based solution with controlled access to the data. The users in each country were able to look at the data and drill down to produce the analysis required on an individual country basis. The system had to be very flexible meeting the core requirements:

• Easy to update
• Variable reporting levels
• Variable user levels
• Ability to model the data

The market research element of the database covered:

• Demographics
• Industry structure
• Competitive landscape

Over 30,000 interviews were conducted to deliver the information required and build the database. The results are immediately actionable and user interrogation of the database ensures the data being available far quicker than previously. The challenge now is for Kodak to keep this up to date.

A lively questions and answer session followed with considerable interest in the database developments in Kodak.

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The use of the Internet in market research is seen by some to represent a new age revolution that will change forever the way we conduct research. But will it go the same way as some dot.com companies have already gone?

The session chaired by Pene Healey began with ORC International's Mike Joseph providing a revealing insight into how the Internet can be used as an effective survey management tool. His case study focused on a research programme conducted for IBM, that measures the satisfaction of customers served by IBM's Business Partners.

So where does the Internet come in? Given the Client and the audience, you might expect to see some form of on-line questionnaire. Instead, we saw the use of "traditional" telephone interviewing but with the survey management accomplished on-line. This on-line process included Business Partners enrolling for the survey; forwarding any additional questions to the standard questionnaire; sending their customer lists in a standard format using a downloadable template (surely a researcher's dream!); nominating the language in which to conduct the interviews; and even selecting the currency in which they are to be invoiced, (music to the ears of any FD). And all accomplished on-line!!! Even the final reports are sent back to Business Partners via email.

Next on the agenda was Exel's Rachel Squire and MORI's Alnoor Samji who considered the use of web-based self-completion questionnaires. However, it was the title of the paper that stimulated the greatest interest ... Delivering a global B2B survey in 12 days from commissioning to reporting (leading to the obvious questions about the methodology and Alnoor's sanity!).

Here, the case study was based on research conducted following the merger of Exel and the Ocean Group. The requirement was to quickly pre-test a number of possible insignias for the merged company with a global audience. Although the discussion of the survey's nuts 'n' bolts was interesting, in particular, the way in which it was possible to incorporate visual stimulus material within the questionnaire, to me, the most refreshing part was the checklist used to assess whether an on-line survey was the best methodology to use. (It was good to see the recognition that e-methodologies are also seen to have drawbacks rather than simply being seen as the perfect solution to all methodology questions).

In this case, an on-line survey was appropriate because there was an available and reliable database of customer information; and an audience that was both IT-literate and with Internet access who had powerful enough PCs, modems and Internet connections to be able to download the necessary stimulus materials quickly.

The only apparent downside to this project appeared to be that the report was written overnight, (it's good to see some traditional research values being maintained!).

Wrapping up the session, MORPACE International's Ruth Collins discussed her work helping Clients design better websites. Her concern was that many websites are produced with little reference to prospective users despite the almost universal agreement that customers should increasingly be at the centre of the design process. (The usual excuse is that there isn't time to conduct any research).

The task here has been to develop an effective methodology that can bring useful insights to website development programme and reflect an understanding of the time pressures on the website development team. Ruth's solution is to use NetLabs that are based on a network of computers in a market research viewing facility with a viewing monitor for the use of Clients in the viewing room. In this way it is possible to video groups; video individual mouse movements on the screen; and capture text files of the web pages requested by individuals.

In conclusion, this was an excellent session that featured three different papers that assessed how e-technology can be applied appropriately to make research happen!

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Session 4 - The Future/Web Development Issues

In these changing times, when even rational people can get carried away by dot.com fever and forget that there are no 'new business models' - only the same old ways of making money, it's even more important that we sometimes stop and look at trends, and think about the implications for the future of business research.

We were, therefore, singularly fortunate to have the first session on Friday - covering The Future and Web Development Issues - led by the futurologist Denis Johnston, Principal Consultant in Advanced Technologies at BT Adastral Park. Denis really is someone who is working on the future and can anticipate (as far as that's possible!) the effect of technology on our lives, both social and business.

Some interesting facts like "a Furby has four times the power of the original lunar lander", were laced with observations on the unexpected effects of technology: "mobile communications and big-brother-style monitoring systems can drive independence for older people (i.e. technology prolongs active life") and predictions of how technology will affect business: "Record stores will close as consumers choose simply to download music from the internet; The wealth of medical information available on the internet will completely change the relationship between doctor and patient; If the professions mainly exist to give advice and information, how will they survive the fact that the information is now freely available?"

Statistics and scientific laws were made enjoyable and memorable via personal anecdotes and jokes - a lesson in presentation for all of us.

From a research point of view the most salient point was the explosion in the amounts of information available - how will we manage this? And the most scary predictions for the future were the 'gadgets' - like the contact lens with an embedded camera - which could change data collection methodologies rather radically! Keeping up with technology is going to become increasingly necessary for survival. The keynote speech was followed by a paper entitled 'The Effect of e-Commerce on the Distribution Chain and Market Research', given by Tony Dent, CMR Group.Com Ltd. Tony described how Coca Cola Enterprises was using the internet to do research to improve their distribution system - and saving money in the process. The issues raised are:- where does the research industry fit in here, and how can the major brands really survive the levelling process inherent in the new technology.

The second point is a question for consumer researchers - the first is more fundamental - market researchers could, to a great extent, be dispensed with, once the processes are in place. The session was rounded off by Gareth Deere, e-MORI, who, in a paper entitled 'Is it safe to go on-line?' shared with us MORI's experience of setting up an on-line panel of IT directors. Some of the learning was very positive: there was no inherent difference in data collected via different methodologies (telephone and on-line), but some was not so good: response rates were a significant issue, to the extent that MORI have reverted to the telephone for this particular population. We are grateful to MORI for being so open with their experience, it was refreshing to hear someone talk about difficulties as well as successes.

In the ensuing question session the point was made that in the face of current data explosion we ought to be talking more about data reduction - a good session for next year.

Overall, however, the session demonstrated very well both the opportunities and the pit-falls associated with the new technologies. The only real constant in life is that nothing turns out exactly as predicted - there's always a spin somewhere that makes the bad not so bad, and the good is never as good as you thought it would be.

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Session 5 - New Thinking, Markets & Challenges

The closing session commenced with a paper from Lee McEwan of e-MORI entitled "Lessons learned the hard way - the development of web-based business networks'. The research showed that businesses are only just beginning to wake up to the potential of e-marketplaces.

It is still early days, and the B2B e-commerce service providers still find themselves with significant challenges and take up is slow. Resistance to adoption of e-commerce include barriers to consideration, obstacles to implementation, including integration issues, as well as difficulties in understanding and defining target markets and the scope of services that will appeal to them. These will need to be overcome before the trillion-dollar forecasts can become more than just hyperbole.

Through various research projects e-MORI have watched their clients learn a number of lessons the hard way including the importance of a detailed knowledge of business processes, the need to achieve the right balance between standardisation and customisation, the requirement for added value, and the benefits of a focus on existing processes (replacement rather than revolution).

Companies will reap huge gains when the Internet is finally plugged efficiently into the guts of big business. But, sadly, it's unlikely that many of the vendors who blazed the B2B trail will be around to share the rewards. Lee then make some predictions for the possible future development of business to business e-commerce, including the anticipated convergence of information portals and e-marketplaces, and concluded that the current uncertainty in this market may good for research.

Tom Reid from MORPACE International followed with a paper entitled "Managing Business Brands In The Era Of Dotcom". He summarised managing business brands as starting with knowing the right questions to ask. If a brand exists, it needs to do something to pay for its keep. Tom emphasised that one should always ask what a brand does, not what it is. By asking what a brand does, a useful hypothesis can be generated - that a brand has a role and should be assessed on the performance of that role. This is true of all brands - consumer, b2b and web-based. Tom's hypothesis is that a brand's role is being the focus of the relationship between the supplier and the customer, and that certain brand dynamics - the way the brand behaves (working better, meaning more, leading) - can create, develop and enhance the relationship. The relationship drives "sales" long term, whatever the prevailing short-term marketing and promotional factors. Gearing everything around the way the brand behaves, channels understanding of brand and communication requirements and sets a critical agenda for research to ensure efficient use of available funds.

Colin Strong from NOP Business questioned whether "Businesses Were Ready For The Mobile Internet". It was all too easy to think of the business market as being comprised of just SMEs and Corporates and for these two groups to consist of fairly homogeneous segments of decision makers. The reality is that within these broad segments there are very different sets of expectations, needs and experiences that are shaping demand for mobile Internet services. At the current state of the market interest and demand appear to be driven mostly at an individual level - there are few business demographics that appear to have a strong influence on demand for the mobile Internet.

Colin recognised that this situation will change as the market matures. Perhaps the fact that these different business segments with their diverse expectations and needs exist is also a function of a relative lack of mobile applications being directed at business users in a coherent, segmented fashion. As the market develops, the challenge will remain for suppliers to develop winning strategies in the business market, in a similar way to the consumer market and whether the right applications can be presented to the right groups of business users? However, the main challenge today will be to break down the existing barriers to Mobile Internet take-up so that concerns about security, systems integration and costs are tackled and companies will actually make their first moves onto the Mobile Internet.

The final paper was rather different. Steve Wills of Strategic Research presented the findings of a project to establish the benchmark of "Best in Class" for in-house research departments, sponsored by 11 members of AURA.

This study set down a benchmark against which a research department can judge itself. It has provided a framework within which any Research Manager can look at all aspects of what he or she does, and see where they can do things better.

But it highlights the area that must be of most concern - that research is not valued as much as it should be. And the whole industry is under threat. The industry may be growing, and has been for years, but it can't be complacent. Response rates are falling. The database industry is threatening to undermine many areas of research.

Ever-growing pressure on timescales is reducing quality. Now, more than ever, we need to be establishing the value of research. And it is mostly in our own hands to do so.

Research can get into a vicious circle. If research is undervalued, it won't be given the resources it needs. With too much demand, but without adequate resources, it is very hard for researchers to add value. The end result being that what is delivered is not as good as it should be, nor is it applied well, inevitably resulting in the research being undervalued. We need to shift to the virtuous circle that does exist in some companies where research is highly valued and, thus, the Research Department is properly resourced. This means that they can do their job properly and can deliver the highest value research. This in turn reinforces value.

And it is not just something that client-side researchers need to address. The responsibility for change must also lie with agencies, to support their clients, and sometimes to demand more from them. Agencies should not just act like factories and fulfil orders - they too must question the value of what is being asked because ultimately, raising the value of research is in everybody's best interests. Given the importance of this report we believe it is appropriate to promote it as the proceeds are being used to fund the original study (and hopefully further work), and because the study was carried out on behalf of a number of well known sponsors in order to promote best practice in our industry.

The report has been published by Strategic Research and is available for £395. Discounts apply for members of AURA, and for those who took part in the survey.

Details can be obtained from the Strategic Research [tel 01453 824248].

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Workshops

a) Engaging Both the Left and the Right Brain
    Essential Thinking Techniques in Qualitative Research

Neil McPhee of Morpace International led this workshop and his topic sounded interesting and challenging at the same time. Interesting because as researchers we all have an interest in experimenting with new ways of thinking. Challenging because after finally getting a hard-pressed business executive to grant you that all-important interview, how can you be sure that he or she is going to be happy to participate in creative techniques?

Although Neil had conscientiously prepared a lot of interesting stimulus - on different projective techniques and on the background to right brain and left brain thinking - as in most good groups, he didn't get a chance to use it all (although judging by the number of business cards given to him by the end, many of the participants are now perusing the slides at their leisure).

One of the reasons for the easy flow of discussion seemed to come from the fact that the workshop was nicely balanced between clientside and agency researchers with the result that almost any subject that came up was looked at from several different angles.

So, after almost two hours of workshop what did we all learn?

Well, starting from the premise that we can't always find out what we really want to know from our respondents just by asking them a simple question, Neil took us on a whirlwind tour of some of the creative techniques he has used - both the star performers and those that he hadn't found any great use for.

This served not only to introduce some techniques and remind us of others but also to stimulate debate about whether other researchers had had similar experiences. NLP was the technique that seemed to split the group most - some loved it and some just couldn't see what the fuss was about. Perhaps it was a question of training - one delegate said it all fell into place on her third NLP training course - although I'm not sure all of us would have the patience to persist with it for so long. De Bono's six hats is the technique that I'm looking forward to trying out in future qualitative work - it sounds fun to use, engaging for the respondents and powerful in the insights it delivers - a good combination in my book.

We then moved on to the nitty gritty of whether our B2B clients really value these sorts of qualitative insights enough to be willing to pay for them. We touched on perceived value in two senses. First, given the choice between "creative" techniques and more conventional research (qualitative or quantitative) which did clients prefer? Second, if using "creative" techniques actually require more resources than standard methods e.g. two or more cameras in a group setting to allow systematic analysis of non-verbal communication, would clients be willing to pay to cover the cost of these extra resources?

The message from clientside was that they are open to employing "creative" techniques as long as they are pertinent to the business problem in hand. The number of agency researchers who had already successfully undertaken projects using a range of these techniques backed this up. One comment that stuck in my mind, as an agency researcher, was that clients don't expect an agency that offers the full gamut of creative techniques to be happy to offer a more limited "four group" solution on other occasions. An interesting question for us to ask ourselves when deciding what we, as agencies, are seeking to offer our clients.

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Mark Tipping of B&MR led this workshop and his charts made use of B&MR's recent work for the Research Development Foundation.

Mark's initial premises were that:

• Time poverty means that business people are less willing to participate in research.
• As response rates of b2b surveys decline, concerns grow about the validity of the data collected
• Ultimately, if recent trends continue, there will be no b2b market research industry.

If that's a little drastic, Mark at least presented a convincing case to show that response rates are indeed declining. There was some suggestion that this was down to an 'image problem' for the industry, and many people apparently look to the MRS to do something about it - something I have never quite understood because our images of most professions are entirely uninfluenced by the professional societies that govern or support them, and are based on their portrayal in sitcoms.

Of the factors affecting decisions to take part in research, three stand out: time; interest in/relevance of the subject; and the approach made/person contacting:

Time

There is not much we can do to give business people more time, other than quitting the profession altogether and inventing new kinds of robot that go to committee meetings and look awake, or delete junk emails twelve at a time. We could however be more honest, it was felt, about the expected duration of interviews, and we could certainly be tougher up front about limiting the length of questionnaires.

This was the first of several areas where an interesting exchange took place between the three or four client side researchers present and the majority of agency researchers. The discussion illustrated very well why it is that we find it so difficult to change. The clients present said that they did respect agencies who took a realistic approach and spoke their minds, but admitted that in many cases they were quite likely to go with the 'Yes' men because they themselves had tough deadlines and internal clients breathing down their necks.

Relevance of the material covered

It was felt by several of those present that this was a key element. When at the end the discussion moved on to the payment of incentives, a majority felt that most b2b respondents were more turned on by an interesting subject than by the lure of a few quid. Exceptions are GPs, MPs (who said cash for questions was just for a few cabinet ministers?) and Accountants.

By contrast, if respondents can be convinced that the subject matter is directly relevant, they are quite likely to give up some of that increasingly valuable time.

Improving the quality of our approach / first contact

About fifty per cent of the workshop concentrated on this crucial area. Glynis Rich of Infocorp made an impassioned plea for better treatment of interviewers, citing a strong link between low pay and poor regard for our front line troops, lower standards of interviewing and the response rate problem under discussion. Some argued that this has always been bad, so it doesn't explain declining response rates, but there was little argument with the contention that the first few seconds on the phone are crucial.

On the whole I found the discussion quite encouraging. A lot of it seems to be in our hands, rather than just reflecting wider trends in the business world that we would struggle to influence. Now, can we take it 'back to our constituencies' as a famously unsuccessful person once said, or will we end up back at the Conference in five years' time doing the same workshop and reporting no progress? No comment. But good workshop; thought-provoking discussion. B2b research is a challenging job, and no part of it is more challenging than getting the really worthwhile people to talk to us.

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c) Information Security Management - a practical viewpoint

The workshop was moderated by Alex Johnston of Jigsaw Research.

The agenda covered:

• Introduction
• The Issues - Strategic
• Syndicate Work - Tactical
• Wrap-Up

After introductions, the conversation turned to a discussion about strategic issues such as:

• Is there a difference between online/offline branding efforts?
• Is online presence "on brand" or "counter brand"?
• Purpose of being online?
• Does e-commerce mean transactions online?
  (Not really - It can be other things - for example,
  personalisation and information consolidation is part of e-commerce.)
• Cost savings
• In offline experiences, it has to do with the human
  transaction experience - but on the web it becomes all about
  function and "does it work".

After a discussion about strategic issues, we broke into teams and focused on a branding exercise designed to teach how to substantiate a brand digitally. The goal of the exercise was for each group to think of a specific bricks-and-mortar company and how it could translate its brand into an online presence.

For the exercise, one group chose the consulting company Accenture and outlined some of the brand characteristics that should be present in the Accenture website. The target audience for this company was defined as a new college recruit who was considering working for Accenture.

We first identified the brand attributes for Accenture:

• Intelligent, hard-working consultants
• Very technically savvy
• "We are the best" - very exclusive place to work
• Great training programmes

We then defined the segment (college recruits) and what their needs are:

• Young
• College graduates
• Technically savvy - have laptops, DVD players, MP3 players, Palm Pilots
• Drive sporty cars
• High incomes
• Looking for a good "stepping stone" in career
• Athletic

Lastly, the group introduced some possible elements for the Accenture website to better reach the defined segment.

Possibilities included:

• Interactivity - such as "meet the consultant" or a place
  to "chat" with someone who currently works at Accenture
• Exclusivity - perhaps take a quiz, and may only submit a
  resume to work there if you passed the quiz
• Career details - outline a "day in the life" of an Accenture consultant

Best Paper Awards

Steve Wills of Strategic Research was voted best speaker overall

Hugh Ross of Market Planning International won the award for best paper content and relevance' and Ruth Collins of MORPACE International received the best newcomer award.

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Previous Conferences: 2008 - 2007 - 2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002 - 2001