The Drive Research team enjoys working in all types of industries. For this market research study, Drive Research worked with a highly specialized, global unified communications company to inquire about conferencing solutions and conferencing software. This included better understanding the U.S. market and factors of choice for these products.
The goal of this market research project was to get an understanding of several key performance indicators (KPIs) from IT decision-makers. The data from this study was used to fuel business strategy next steps. Ultimately, the client was provided a dashboard of key metrics which can be tracked year-over-year.
Below is an inside look at the objectives, approach, and results for this IT decision-maker market research project. This was conducted with businesses across the United States.
Here's an inside look at an IT decision-maker market research survey conducted among U.S. business professionals. It was conducted with 400 IT business professionals on business communications and conferencing solutions.
Objectives
In May 2018, an international manufacturer of conferencing equipment partnered with Drive Research on an market research study. The market research study provided answers to the key objectives stated by the client at the beginning of the project. In addition, other secondary objectives were addressed in the market research study. The market research ensures the company strategy is aligned with feedback from IT decision-makers.
As part of the acquisition, this survey would serve as a benchmark or baseline for future industry studies. The company wanted to gather initial awareness and perception data prior to the name and brand change becoming more commonplace. To accomplish this, an online survey was conducted by Drive Research with IT decision-makers and influencers at a variety of different sized companies.
Approach
To address the objectives at-hand, Drive Research recommended the following market research approach for the survey. Drive Research recommended using an online survey delivered through targeted panel invitations to the intended audience in the United States. Online surveys are cost-effective, offer a quick turn-around, are measurable, and gather quality feedback. This offers several advantages over phone surveys or mail surveys.
Drive Research follows an exclusive in-house approach our team has built for survey projects. Our method uses a step-by-step and task-oriented approach to project management from kickoff through completion. This includes a kickoff meeting, workplan, survey design, programming, testing, fieldwork, analysis, and reporting.
Fieldwork for the survey began on July 5 and lasted until July 19. The survey consisted of 35 questions and took respondents an average of 7 minutes to complete. Many objectives and topics were covered in the 35 question industry study to gather a broad overview of the market as well as capture integral details on each of the brands (including competitors).
A total of 400 responses were collected. This offers a +/- 5% margin of error for a survey with a random population of B2B respondents at the 95% confidence level. This means if the survey were conducted 100 more times, 95 of out 100 times the results would yield within +/- 5% of the stated totals in the report if the sample was truly randomized.
Outcomes
The results of the study remain confidential with the client. However, the survey answered several questions based on the key objectives of the study. The list below includes some example primary and secondary objectives.
- What brands of conferencing and communications solutions were respondents aware of?
- What is the awareness of the brand change in the past few months?
- What do respondents know about the client? What words or phrases were used?
- What do respondents know about the competition? What words or phrases were used?
- What are the perceptions of the different business communications brands?
- How likely are consumers to recommend brands used? (Net Promoter Score: NPS)
- What goes into the decision-making process? How long does it take?
- What factors matter most to IT decision-makers for business communications solutions?
After the study was completed, several deliverables were passed to the client. This included a comprehensive report with an executive summary of themes, a performance scorecard to track changes in KPIs year-over-year, recommendations and action items based on the data, an infographic, and question-by-question survey results with several cross tabs. These cross-tabs included business size, region, and other factors.
Contact Drive Research
Drive Research is a market research company that helps organizations all over the world with custom market research needs. This particular survey dealt with business communications and conferencing solutions with IT decision-makers and influencers.
Have questions about an upcoming study? Email us at [email protected] or call us at 315-303-2040.