Cambiar is one of the premier training resources in the market research world. Our main focus is on increasing the impact – and therefore the value – of insights to businesses of all types and sizes. Most Consumer Insights functions are very good at their craft – the generation of insights into customers, consumers and markets. But an insight is not an insight unless it has impact and actually changes behavior. So most of our training focuses on what we call ‘Power Skills’ – those capabilities that enable insights to actually have impact. These include Communicating for Impact, The Journey from Researcher to Consultant, Presentation Skills, Creativity in Research, Influencing Skills and Data Synthesis.
But we would argue that our latest course – Measuring Business Impact – is the most important one to date. Why?
Because all the research that we have done in concert with Boston Consulting Group and the Yale Center for Consumer Studies recently suggests that Consumer Insights functions in major corporations that are considered to be Strategic Partners (or even Sources of Competitive Advantage) share at least one thing in common: they pretty much all measure their impact on the organization.
There has long been disagreement in the research community as to whether return on research investment – i.e. the financial impact of insights generation on the business – could or even should be measured. Well, we have news for you: it can and it is. Over a third of Consumer Insights functions in major corporations do actually measure their impact on the business as a whole. And here’s the funny thing: these functions get more budget, more resources and more respect from the organization than those who don’t.
When, after the BCG/Cambiar/Yale results were published, GRBN partnered with BCG to understand exactly how these organizations did it, we were very excited, as we had been doing very much the same thing and had developed training modules to help companies achieve this goal. Now, merging our work with that of GRBN – and, in particular, the GRBN Invest In Insights Handbook – we are delighted to be working hand in glove with the organization to bring all that we jointly know about what, how and when to measure business impact to the global market research community.
We are delighted to have been recognized as the first accredited GRBN training partner in this venture and look forward enormously to helping our colleagues in the industry, both in client CI functions and in research agencies, embed ROI measurement into their everyday practices and so increase their impact and enable them to rightfully earn larger budgets and resources.
After all, we don’t know of any other function in modern-day business that guarantees a higher return on investment than does Consumer Insights – and that is worth celebrating!
To find out more about how our Power Skills suite of training modules can help you, please visit us at www.consultcambiar.com/training.
