Boost Your Data Quality: Centralize Your Qual for Better
Editor’s note: This article is an automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
On November 20, 2024, six organizations presented during the Quirk’s Virtual Sessions – Data Quality series. One of those organizations was Voxpopme.
Presenters Erica Dinger, director of research services and David Katz, VP of client services illustrated how AI can be leveraged by a qualitative repository. This is a great wait to ensure insights are not siloed, prevent company resources from being wasted on repeat projects and much more.
Session transcript:
Joe Rydholm
Hi everybody and welcome to our session “Boost Your Data Quality: Centralize Your Qual for Better Insights.”
I’m Quirk’s Editor, Joe Rydholm and before we get started let’s take a second to go over the ways you can participate in today’s discussion. You can use the chat tab to interact with other attendees during the session and you can use the Q&A tab to submit questions during the session and we will answer as many as we have time for during the Q&A portion afterwards.
Our session today is presented by Voxpopme. Enjoy the presentation!
Erica Dinger
Thank you for joining us today. I'm Erica Dinger and I'm the director of research services for Voxpopme.
I've been in the market research industry for 25 years, both on the brand side and on the services side. I have worked both in the nonprofit space conducting public policy research and designing and evaluating programs. And I've also been on the for-profit side at some major brands like Under Armour and on the services side as head of full-service research for North America at Qualtrics.
I've worked with organizations across almost every field. So, believe me when I say that I have been where you are sitting right now and have weathered many changes in the market research industry. David.
David Katz
Erica, thank you.
I've also been in this industry for a long time, 30 years and counting in sales and sales leadership roles. Half of that has been with big research agencies and half with research technology companies. The last eight plus years has been with Voxpopme.
For the first six years or so, I thought the stuff that I was talking to clients about was really cool, but the last two led by the AI development has really blown it away. And what it really has done is taught this old dog some new tricks. Better than new tricks, some new possibilities, one of which we'll be talking about today in fact, right, Erica?
Erica Dinger
Absolutely.
David Katz
But before we dive into that, let's just take a step back and talk a little bit about who Voxpopme is.
Voxpopme is a leading AI powered qualitative insights platform and for years we've been making easy to scale human stories and real time video feedback. We do this, as you can see with the brand list there, we're partnering with global brands and agencies, bringing them the human voice.
And really what giving this human voice has done for these companies is provided a critical advantage. One, it's made them much more customer-centric, and two, they're making more empathetic business decisions.
So, now we're going to get into the guts of what we talked about and I'm going to kick it back to you, Erica.
Erica Dinger
Thanks.
Now this is the classic approach to insights that I'm sure we're all accustomed to, and this is what we would refer to as ‘siloed insights.’
Team A is working on a project on the impact of inflation. Team B, meanwhile, is conducting some IHUTs on packaging and Team C is over here doing live interviews on sustainability.
No one is talking to each other or has an easy way to see what questions or project details other teams are working on, much less be able to see or understand or build on the insights that those teams have uncovered.
The Voxpopme repository solves for this problem with all of your qualitative data in one place. It's easy to see what other teams are working on and to understand what insights they're uncovering. It keeps those insights from being siloed and allows you to understand the big picture, not just your part of it.
And with our AI integration, you could query one project or an entire suite of projects to uncover those insights and understand what other teams in your group are working on.
For instance, this team could see that while of course price remained a driving factor in bringing purchase decisions forward, their messaging about sustainability allowed them to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. So, instead of a race to the bottom, they could remain competitively priced while using their ecological focus to distinguish their brand. This was a real case study, by the way.
David Katz
That was awesome, Erica.
Let's dive into what we mean when we talk about a ‘qualitative repository.’
Qualitative repository is a centralized digital storage and management part of your Voxpopme account. It's actually designed to house qualitative data from a variety of different sources. Things like IDI, focus groups, video surveys, even text boxes, open ends, anything really with a transcript. This helps organizations analyze and reuse their qualitative insight to drive informed decisions, assuring that they have fast, high quality access to rich data over time.
Now, you may be thinking ‘what is the difference between this and perhaps a knowledge management system?’
Knowledge management systems are great. They broadly capture store and share knowledge, such as documents, procedures, best practices and reports. But with a qualitative repository from Voxpopme, you actually have all the raw content so you can drive new insights or new work across the repository findings.
So, you might be saying, ‘why are we talking about this today? Why now?’
In two simple letters, it's AI, right? This takes us into the heart of the possibilities that I mentioned before when I was introducing myself. AI has been for qual what the internet has been for quant. It's just been explosive. It's really made it leap off the bounds. And that's really led to this greater demand for this contextual understanding, right?
The ability to understand the why behind behaviors and trends. AI streamlines this, it makes it easier to scale repositories without any of the manual effort that had to go into tagging, organizing or analyzing each individual data set.
Frankly, those that are effectively harnessing this kind of information, this qualitative information, have a significant advantage versus those that don't because it makes them more agile and responsive to any of the market changes that are going on.
So, what I'm going to do is click out of the presentation in just a second and just really go 30 seconds into the platform to give you more context in terms of what we're talking about.
We're on our learn deck. This is just non-proprietary stuff that we're doing.
So, what I'm going to say is pick a scenario. We want to learn about some coffee understanding. We want to know, for example, how does Costa compete against Starbucks. So, perhaps what I can do is I can look through the different studies that we did in pick out the coffee studies that we run, and we've run a few different coffee studies. So as I start to go down here, I'll see a coffee study here, I'll go to the next page of projects, and here's a coffee study here and a coffee study here.
Now we've got three projects. We're looking across projects, we're looking across our repository of different learnings that we've conducted, and now we're going to view these projects.
Here are all the transcripts. It's over 300 videos now that the technology is going through. So, over 300 stories that people have been saying, we go into the insights world, and you'll see it'll start to summarize each one individually very quickly.
But now I want to answer my question specifically, how does Costa Coffee compete against Starbucks?
So, for that, I go into the chat, I ask my question, looking across all of the responses, what are the main reasons why a respondent might prefer visiting Costa Coffee versus Starbucks? Please share as an executive summary. You hit it. And within seconds, the AI is organizing, analyzing and letting you go back without having to relaunch a new study into understanding why people might prefer Costa Coffee.
Alright, back into the deck.
I hope that brought that to life for everybody.
We went from the demo into get to know Katz a little bit, right? I'm going to be using a Moneyball example to explain something because I just think this does a great job of, the book in the movie, of setting examples for what we do.
For those who didn't see the movie or don't know the story, it's the true story of Oakland A's general manager, Billy, who I saw speak at a conference once and was excellent, who uses a data-driven approach to build a competitive team when he is at a disadvantage. He has a really small budget and he's competing against big budget teams. So, he needs to figure out how he can find players to drive wins. He uses metrics to identify undervalued players contributing to more wins with wins being the goal.
How does this relate to repository? Well, there's a couple of things that occurred to me as I was thinking through this quote.
One is, it shifts the shifts from input to outcomes. It's not about what studies can I conduct or how do I capture more data? The focus now becomes on driving action or wins for the organization.
Maybe another way to think about it is that analytics help identify undervalued players. An AI powered qualitative repository helps you find those overlooked insights and patterns that make you drive smarter and faster decisions for the organization. Again, creating wins.
Now we're going to go into some specific benefits. We're going to cover four of them, and I'm going to start, then turn it over to Erica.
The first benefit that I want to share is the reduction of research redundancies.
Take a look at this, that 50% number is a real number. Read the quote as I continue to talk. And you're going to hear the client's voice as they've done because this is from an actual case study.
As they've done the work to understand what the cost savings are, the 50% cost savings by eliminating redundant research. You combine that with the McKinsey number that indicates that 30% to 40% of employees' time is wasted searching for existing data, and now you've got real impact, you've got time and you've got money.
So, you take that budget, and you spread it across new initiatives. Or more importantly, you pick up on existing initiatives, not repeating the work that you've been doing, but strategically moving that research forward. And you can spread that budget over that new learning. An AI powered qualitative repository makes it easy to revisit, reuse and reanalyze that data so that you have new perspectives and new learning.
Erica.
Erica Dinger
Absolutely.
Another key benefit is the collaboration and democratization that's available when you have an AI repository of all of your data, especially when you have hours of interviews, videos and transcripts to comb through. Having everything easily accessible both to you and your teammates, allows you to share those insights, ideas and videos at the click of a button.
And you can see here just how many groups can gain value from having easy access to your content. And this is just an example.
With AI Chat, you can also treat the chat as a colleague and ask questions across a single project or a whole set of projects. And since the AI provides evidence for every point, as David was able to show in the demo, you can easily create a show reel with the click of a button to share with colleagues or stakeholders, which means that you no longer have to be the gatekeeper and the only person with access to this information. You can easily share it, making it faster and easier to share those insights.
Real conversations with real consumers are the benefit of qualitative research, especially as we battle bots and fraud in online quantitative research. Now, I'm not being negative towards online quantitative research. It's definitely a tool in our toolbox, but that's just the state that we're in today.
Qualitative research doesn't come with bar charts and percentages. Having all of your qualitative work in one place makes sure everyone is using the same platform to understand and analyze that information. And our AI provides the video evidence again to back up your analysis. So, you don't have to tell people to just trust you about what those interviewees said. It's easy to share examples of what they're exactly saying and make your point.
You can create fast, impactful show reels, pull out meaningful quotes and demonstrate to your colleagues and stakeholders what your consumers are saying. Highlighting your points and bringing the voice of the consumer to life, which after all is what qualitative research is all about.
David.
David Katz
Thanks Erica.
Erica, this is the benefit that makes me cry, right? So, speed, ease, and power to insight makes me cry. I think about all the nights and weekends that I've spent going through data, trying to get answers from my boss, trying to get answers from my clients, and this is the one that makes me cry because now picture this, right?
So, you've just made a presentation. The presentation went great. There are questions about the presentation, and you don't have the answers at your fingertips. Now you've got to go back to your office, you've got to maybe make a call to your supplier. You've got to go through data. Maybe you've got to write a brief for some new research that needs to be done.
With the AI powered repository. Executives can get those answers quickly using the chat right in the meeting. That's a real benefit. That is real speed to insight. You're getting insights on demand. You're making more informed decisions from the high-quality data you've already collected. You can drive that action without delays, and that's a real benefit for your organization.
I'm done crying, but I know that as you're listening to this, you're all thinking about that example and all those nights and weekends.
How can you not end more positively than showing Ted lasso on a slide at the end? I can't help but smile as I start to see Ted, right? The truth bomb that Ted is staying here, that aura he's dropping, its spot on.
Hopefully Erica and I have done a pretty good job of being able to bring to life the power that is in centralizing qualitative content right now.
Teams can tackle challenges collectively. Teams can leverage a broader shared understanding to bring that power into the organization. It really does create an unstoppable momentum towards goals, dare I say, creating wins for the organization. Remember what I said, significant savings in time and money, that's tangible.
That's all we got for today. Thank you, guys, so much. Erica and I had a great time sharing this with you.
Now I think we're going to be taking on some questions.