Colin Wheeler, Managing Director of Survey Solutions Ltd, walks us through understanding data and insights
No one questions the value of getting good feedback from stakeholders – it helps prioritise budgets and resources in the important areas and is a sense check that these are working as they should be.
However, the working environment is challenging, with lots of pressure on time and resources. We live in a sea of data, targets, numbers and complex stakeholder audiences.
Organisations thrive and succeed by understanding their stakeholders well and using data effectively, but the insights become hard to find when there is excess data.
While it is important that the data from feedback is carefully analysed and presented in a clear format, it is all too easy for significant details to be lost in the clutter of the data.
Making sure that there is a clear indication of what is happening and direction on the actions that need to be taken is critical.
Avoiding this clutter can be as simple as enabling reports to highlight results for different groups and how they compare with other groups, or as complex as using artificial intelligence techniques to help summarise and sort out open comments questions and extract value from the qualitative feedback that has been shared. (This is particularly helpful when you have several thousands of comments to sort through!)
Who wants to be an analyst?
The additional challenge with managing and analysing data is that this is a skill in and of itself. You don’t necessarily need to be an analyst to use the insights and analysis, but if you are starting with the data, then you need tools to turn the data into something useful.
Gathering and analysing feedback is another item on the already full to-do list of many of our clients, and few need the challenge of lots of data, with insufficient insight and understanding!
Getting to the meaning in the data
At Survey Solutions, we manage this in three main ways.
First, we provide access to a sophisticated suite of online reports that allow clients who are NOT experts in data analysis to quickly and easily filter and compare results and identify strengths and weaknesses. The reporting tools have been tested with clients from various backgrounds and have proven simple to use.
Second, we also enable analysis of more complex issues – either by our own team of experts or by formatting the data so that internal client data specialists can dig deeper into the results.
Third, our experts also prepare reporting – a management commentary or a presentation summarising the results with an executive summary of insights, key metrics, and a detailed breakdown of the data.
Throughout any project, our research experts are there to support our clients, starting with working through the questions to be asked as part of the feedback exercise, collecting the data, encouraging participation, providing the data in the results portal and providing additional reporting.
We support our clients for up to a year following any research project, responding to queries and new issues that might come up, making it easier to navigate the sea of data that surrounds us.
Ultimately, it’s about people
Our team focuses on ensuring that the people aspects of our work, helping clients understand their stakeholders, are at the centre of each project.
That includes everything from thinking about the people providing feedback to thinking about the needs of the organisations being supported and the teams that will use the insight and analysis to drive forward effective change.
Our team of experts is on hand to provide support and counsel throughout the process, ensuring that the challenges of running a feedback program are managed positively and do not become another burden.
We call it ‘doing the heavy lifting’.
