Successful Spring Evening Meeting at the IPA

Our second evening meeting was held on 6th March at the IPA, Belgrave Square, excellently chaired by Brian Jacobs and with four panel members representing research insight, data systems and analysis tools:- Stephen Blouet (Kantar), Sabine Cronick (2CV), Helen Rose (the7stars) and Ben Haley (Initiative UK). The theme was ‘Can the research industry survive without increased automation?

Very interesting contributions from the panel and subsequent audience comments indicated clear agreement that automation is very good at measuring human behaviour (how many, who and when), but researchers are still essential for the how and why questions, strategic development and brand strategy. Bespoke research and analysis are obviously still vital for our industry, and it’s best to let humans interpret insights and their impact on business, allowing machines to create the big data, increase efficiency and speed.

Also, better quality data is needed as a sound basis for interpretation and we need to persuade clients that big data isn’t everything. So ‘yes’ to automation so that researchers can add value to the findings and increase their job satisfaction at the same time. Collaboration is vital between data scientists and insight researchers, who must not be resistant to change. Machines are best when they speed up repetitive processes and create smart data from big data overload. There is a need for data scientists, qualitative and quantitative researchers to work together to develop user-friendly, multi-purpose automation tools which create the right foundation for developing intelligent insights for clients.

Pictures of the event can be viewed in the gallery: Spring Evening Meeting 2019 

A full report will appear in the next Research Network Newsletter.