This Fortune 100 company needed to answer a number of strategic business questions to help build the foundation for its future planning process. It also faced a ‘zero budgeting’ environment, so new spending on additional research was restricted. The company suspected that they possessed all the data they needed to get the answers, but were overwhelmed by the sheer volume and disorganization of the existing research and data. Critical information was buried in regional or category silos and the company had no framework for connecting this information to shopper behavior or macroeconomic changes, two key elements to developing the future strategy. Executives were frustrated that the company lacked the order and structure to make sense of the information they already had--and forge that information into strategy.
Grail has worked with many clients to help them ‘know what they know’ by organizing existing research and quickly combing through materials to find answers. We help clients structure disparate data and build compelling, insights-based narratives from wide-ranging sources. For this client, we conducted a systematic review of all existing research resources, categorizing and indexing thousands of pages of PowerPoint and Excel files to prepare them for synthesis. First, we provided a simplified catalog for our client to quickly see the topics and themes for which they already possessed information. We then distilled key insights from data sources to answer executives’ strategic questions about the future of retail and its impact on shopper behavior. Finally, we collaborated with client stakeholders to identify the most relevant trends and business implications, providing the basis for a series of strategic initiatives to drive future growth.
"Grail is like my secret weapon. Their outputs have gone viral and made us look great internally. The quality and turnaround is great but the real difference is how they help us squeeze more value from our investments."
The client estimated Grail’s support saved them upwards of $150K in duplicative research spending in this first project and upwards of $450K in the following nine months. The project provided a framework the insights team used to ‘first search’ before creating new briefs, allowing global teams to leverage existing research and insights. Additionally, the project uncovered insights hidden in the company’s existing research specifically on the future of retail, allowing stakeholders to make decisions without commissioning new research. Finally, the project provided efficiency when planning for their next budget, by identifying via heat maps the core areas where they needed to focus future research spending.
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