Editor's note: Kumar Mehta is CEO of Cross-Tab Marketing Services Pvt. Ltd., a Mumbai, India, research outsourcing firm. Mehta can be reached at marketing@cross-tab.com. This article appeared in the July 25, 2011, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

Offshore outsourcing of market research operations has become an accepted way of doing business. Almost all large research companies and many mid-size and smaller market research firms are outsourcing an increasing proportion of their research operations. However, those involved in outsourcing have realized that sending work to a distant location is not the same as working with your data processing or survey-scripting staff sitting in the next office or down the hall and outsourcing should be given separate consideration. The people who understand this best and embrace this shift are most likely to succeed in a world where globalization and disaggregation of services is simply how business gets done.

Having played a role as both a customer (leading Microsoft's market research outsourcing strategy and implementation) and a supplier of market research outsourcing (in my current role as CEO of Cross-Tab), I want to discuss how to make outsourcing relationships work most effectively. This article addresses trends within market research that influence outsourcing and the basic tenets to building successful outsourcing relationships.

Trends influencing outsourcing

Disaggregation of market research services is going to increase.

We are going to see continued specialization in research design and insight providers, sampling companies, software providers, operations providers, visualization specialists, etc. Corporate clients are increasingly pulling in the best talent and the best cost model and this generally involves disaggregation of tasks and specialization of research providers.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, writes, "The best companies are the best collaborators. In the flat world, more and more business will be done through collaborations within and between companies, for a very simple reason: The next layers of value creation ... are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone." This observation could not be truer for the market research industry.

The cost-savings and capacity increases are real and material.

Market research companies can find real benefit from outsourcing, in terms of cost-savings and increasing their capacity and offerings. As research companies face pressure from corporations to lower costs, outsourcing is one way to stay competitive. Corporate clients are seeking outsourcing companies either to work with them directly or have them partner with their U.S. design and analysis firms.

Basic tenets to build successful outsourcing relationships

Desire to make it work.

The No. 1 driver of a successful outsourcing relationship is desire to make it work. If all parties have a genuine desire to make it work, it will work. If any party feels pressured into outsourcing or is just doing it to "see how it is," chances are it will not work well. I have seen many projects, both as a client and as a supplier of outsourcing relationships, not achieve their full potential because the desire and commitment was lacking.  

Develop the approach

Every company has its own approach or model for building new relationships. At Cross-Tab, our approach is simple and the fundamental philosophy is that the more time we spend on upfront planning, the better will be the eventual outcome. Our methodology is based on these four steps:

  1. Project planning and setting standards/points of reference.
  2. Staffing, training and process kick-off.
  3. Live operations. 
  4. Feedback loops and continuous improvement.

These steps, coupled with detailed process sheets can impact the quality of deliverables and reduce the chance of errors.

Build playbooks.

Playbooks establish clear standards, protocols and processes to be followed by all parties to ensure consistency, error-free deliverables and success. They are meant to ensure every process and quality step is followed. The playbook should clearly detail roles and responsibilities, timelines, process flows and quality-control procedures.

Focus on the COPS.

While there are many elements involved in building successful outsourcing relationships, the four key areas to focus on are communication, operations, planning and staffing (COPS). These are the areas that can make or break successful outsourcing relationships.

Win-win-win

The ultimate goal of any market research outsourcing relationship is a win-win-win, by that I mean a win for the end client commissioning the research, a win for the research supplier and a win for the outsourcing organization. Anything less is a suboptimal result and is not sustainable way to do business.