Editor's note: Microsoft and NewtonX are finalists of the 2022 Client/Supplier Collaboration which is a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. To find out more about the awards click here.

Research fuels Microsoft Azure’s customer obsession. Our partnership with NewtonX enables the Microsoft research team to source high quality data points that feed into the insights we provide product group stakeholders for use in their strategic planning process. The partnership has yielded increased trust in the data and enhanced relationships with stakeholders and their strategic use of the insights. For NewtonX, it’s proven a new model of client-vendor collaboration anchored in trust and thought partnership, enabling them to empower clients with the insights to make confident, critical decisions. 

Communication successful partnerships require working relationships built on trust and constant feedback loops. 

“It's about assuming good intentions with our interactions along with flexibility to achieve the goals of the engagement. Rarely does everything go right the first time – being able to trust in your supplier partner to to pivot with the curveballs that you're thrown in the field – being able to give crucial, constructive feedback to flexibly adapt when things aren’t going well. That's how our partnership produces trust and carries an engagement forward." – Tracy Wang, senior research program manager, Microsoft. 

Agility and flexibility – with quick pivots, unexpected challenges become constructive learnings that strengthen the partnership.

“Our partnership is very metrics driven. The base of any discussion is always: What are the metrics? How many people did we reach out to and how many people responded? How many were screened and how many are passing the screeners? And then we're looking at the metrics and asking, where's the gap? Do we need to increase the volume or ...