‘Stakeholder Insights’ and ‘Perception Audits’ - provide your competitive edge

In a world of constant change, organisations needs to be flexible, responsive and resilient. They need a clear and accurate understanding of how their business is perceived by key audiences, they need a clear sense of who they are and what the ‘value’ is that they can bring to the market.

This can only come from a deep understanding of the needs, motivations, aspirations, priorities and behaviours of all their ‘customers’ groups.

With this knowledge they can differentiate. They can design their business, products, services, customer proposition and communications around those insights and in so doing create long term sustainable competitive advantage.

Often there is a mismatch between how people inside a business see themselves and how others outside the business see them. Bad information leads to bad decisions.

Even internally, different groups can hold very different perspectives from each other. Senior management need to understand and manage the needs and expectations of all their key stakeholder groups, internal and external.

It is the mismatches in perceptions that are often at the heart of management failure.

We seek to understand these mismatches and the real needs of customers and provide clarity and focus. In so doing we can offer profound and surprising insights. This creates the opportunity for new ways of thinking and acting which can impact the entire organisation and the way it conducts business.

Perceptions and Communications Audits. We work with senior management teams to uncover these insights through the use of Perception and Communications Audits as well as traditional market research.

We conduct candid, confidential conversations with a cross section of your stakeholders, internally and externally. The issues we explore can be very focused and specific or very broad.

We are interested in a holistic understanding of their business challenges, their expectations and experiences of interacting with your business, their experience of your products and services, your relationship with them and the threats and opportunities to your business in general.

Understanding the world from their point of view, what they really think about you and your business, can provide the critical difference between you being a business that is proactive and a potentially disruptive one, constantly reacting to situations apparently outside of your control.

Sometimes the conversations that follow an audit of this kind can be difficult. It can be hard to hear what people really think. That's why we describe our approach as the ‘grit in the oyster.’ But that's the role of a ‘critical friend,’ telling you things as they are, rather than how you might wish them to be.

This is not traditional market research, but a dynamic, iterative, creative process, where we can test and develop ideas with your key stakeholder groups as well as gather insights into their concerns needs and experiences.

We don’t just feedback information; we provide clear recommendations based on our insights and experience and thanks to our extensive network of trusted associates, we can help implement any recommendations too.

Audits of this kind inevitably act as a powerful catalyst for change and a signal of change, to all those involved.