Main Title

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Parallel Session 8

Enhancing business consultancy

skills to ensure customer insight

professionals deliver into the future

David Smith, DVL Smith

and

Dimitrios Tsourougiannis, Astellas Pharma Europe

EphMRA 2013 Pharmaceutical Market Research Conference

Main Title

slide wording

goes here

Enhancing business consultancy skills

to ensure customer insight

professionals deliver into the future

Dr David Smith, DVL Smith and

Dimitrios Tsourougiannis,

Astellas Pharma Europe Ltd.

The Challenge

• Differentiating brands in a competitive marketplace requires customer

insight professionals to provide winning solutions.

• The pressure is on to unearth strategic insights that create business

growth. Expectations are high with the arrival of ‘Big Data’.

• The traditional ‘market researcher’ must now embrace a new skill set.

From market researcher to

trusted business advisor

Market researcher

• Project focused

• Process driven

• Narrow canvas

• Reactive

• Supportive

• Data focussed

• Anchored in the here and now

• Hesitant & equivocal

• Results provider

• Decision shy

Business advisor

• Business focused

• Problem driven

• Context enlightener

• Proactive

• Participative

• Idea generator

• Comfortable with ambiguity & uncertainty

• Confident & decisive

• Influencer & persuader

• Decision framer

The business consultancy

skill set

1. Problem crystalliser

2. Wide angle lens

3. Customer Insight Detective

4. ‘Insight Intrapreneur’

5. Business storyteller

6. Business advisor

1. Problem crystalliser:

getting to the heart of the business

issue – working on the right

problem

• Being able to ‘nail the problem’ is at the heart of successful customer

insight.

• The world is now more complex, so getting to the ‘true problem’ has

become more of a challenge.

• We now know much more about the cognitive biases that bedevil the

way stakeholders ‘present’ a problem.

We need to ask ‘killer

questions’ to build forensic

problem definition skills

Context

Crystallise

Agenda

2. Being the wide-angle lens:

seeing the big picture, joining up the

evidence and offering advice based on

what we know

• Organisations can be overwhelmed by the ‘Black Swan’ – the

unexpected outcome. ‘Strategic foresight’ is on the agenda.

• Being able to read the market signals is critical.

• Customer insight professionals need to become the organisation’s

‘panorama thinker’.

Maximising the richness of

the pharma landscape

• We have fantastic data at our fingertips: online drug lists, SPSS

demographics, clinical trial data, CRM and BI tools: Cegedim Mobile,

VEEVA, Spotfire and Cognos.

• They are fantastic tools to quickly manipulate data and put them into a

graphical format.

• But seeing the ‘big picture’ remains a key skill.

We need holistic analysis tools to

help us become the ‘wide angle lens’

• We need to organise multiple imperfect datasets into a learning

‘system’.

• We require tools to evaluate the robustness of our integrated data.

• We must make the creative interpretative leap.

Breaking down ‘holistic’

analysis into ‘frames’

Intuitive

Frame

Experience

Frame

Enrichment

frame

Evaluation

frame

Framing the

business

decision

3. Customer insight detective:

plugging gaps in existing data using

lean creative problem solving

methodologies

• Today the customer insight environment requires a leaner, faster

approach to problem solving.

• The ‘classic’ market research project is now less common: the desk to

qualitative to quantitative three month project is a luxury!

• Finding fast, improvised, flexible pragmatic solutions to problems is

key.

Think lean – moving quickly to

test the most critical

assumption(s) and plug the gaps

• By ‘lean’ we mean the ability to be able to identify the most critical

underlying assumption underpinning an idea.

• The focus is on setting up highly focused ‘hypotheses’ that we can then

quickly validate (or not).

• The customer insight professional then needs to know how to dip into the

tool-bag of customer insight techniques to plug those gaps...

Some illustrations of creative

ways of plugging gaps in your

insight

If Apple was running the NHS what would customer service look

like?

Wider context

Live a day in the life of a ‘customer advocate’

and ‘customer detractor’.

Deep dive

Ask an F1 racing team how they deal with sudden emergencies

during Grand Prix races.

New angles

4. Insight Intrapreneur: knowing how

to lead ‘fierce strategic’

conversations that will ‘validate’

what insights will drive business

growth

• Insights are rarely found: they are created.

• Insights are created by entering into conversations with key

stakeholders.

• So customer insight professionals need to be ‘insight intrapreneurs’.

The dialogue with stakeholders

Is this just data or an ‘insight’ that will drive growth and profit?

Let’s examine its:

• Credibility and resonance

• Differentiating strength

• Power to change behaviour

• Impact on the business

• Ease of deliverability in the

organisation

• Flexibility – can we adapt en

route?

5. Being a business storyteller:

knowing how to use narrative

to influence, get over your

message and make it ‘stick’

• A narrative taps into decision makers emotions and will make our

messages stick.

• Customer insight professionals are now expected to influence and

persuade and not just present.

• There is a need to engage with stakeholders by

being a great storyteller.

Guide to constructing a

compelling story

• Develop a crystal clear message

• Identify a unifying theme

• Build the architecture of your story

• Use imaginative storytelling techniques to get over

the detail

• Create impactful visual metaphors

• Engage with Personal Storytelling Episodes

• Make sure your story flows towards framing the

decision choices

6. Trusted business advisor: being

able to provide an internal

evidence based consultancy

service to senior management

• Accept that you are ‘admissible evidence’

• Take personal responsibility for actions.

• Have a ‘make it happen’ mindset.

Ask yourself the following

questions . . . and act

• Am I the wide angle lens: an outside-in thinker?

• Do I always creatively add value?

• Do I act on the difference between genuine ‘complexity’ and ‘confusion’?

• Have I tested everything to destruction and eliminated loose, woolly,

‘fudged’ thinking?

• Have I communicated as memorably and concisely and with as much

clarity as possible?

• Do I always take lots of fast, multiple, simultaneous action to achieve key

outcomes?

• Am I an energy radiator, not an energy drain?

Summary: The business

consultancy skill set

Problem crystalliser

Wide angle lens

Customer Insight Detective

‘Insight Intrapreneur’

Business storyteller

Business advisor

As Linus said ‘There is no

heavier burden than a great

potential’

• Through imaginative skills development programmes we can show

that as an industry we are developing these critical business consultancy

skills.