Want to make your research have a greater impact? It only takes a small step

You’ve carried out research. You’ve spoken to users. The insights are all there. Now it’s time to put them into practice and improve the product or service.

In theory, it sounds simple, but in practice, organisations sometimes find it difficult to apply the results of their research. How do you put all those insights into practice? What do you tackle first? Which opportunities add the most value for the customer and the organisation?

Research findings are often lost because not enough attention is paid to the follow-up steps. And that’s a shame. You’ve invested in research, so naturally you want it to make an impact.

You can achieve this with just one small extra step: prioritising together with your key stakeholders. For example, by linking customer insights to business objectives, or by jointly mapping out the impact of the issues identified.

What exactly do we mean by ​‘prioritising’?

It’s worth clarifying that first.

Once you’ve carried out a study, you end up with a pile of insights and recommendations. Naturally, the aim is for your organisation to act on these recommendations – to apply them to your product or service. To indicate how significant certain customer insights are, you prioritise them. So you’re essentially saying: for the customer, X is the most important thing. Y is also important, but just a little less so. You prioritise your insights to indicate what should be done first from the customer’s perspective, and what might be able to wait a little longer.

The customer comes first, but the customer’s perspective isn’t everything

As well as customers’ wishes and needs, product owners and other stakeholders naturally also have to contend with organisational objectives, business implications and development capacity. So if your analysis of the research only takes the users’ perspective into account, you’re missing part of the story. 

Don’t get us wrong: we believe the user should always come first. Digital products must revolve around people – not the other way round. But if you want your research to make an impact, you also need to look at the business side of things. You need to align customer insights with business objectives. You do this by setting priorities together with your key stakeholders.

The power of prioritising together

By prioritising together with your key stakeholders – by jointly deciding which opportunities and challenges need to be tackled first – you ensure that your insights actually lead to action. The user’s voice is given a voice. If you fail to take the organisation’s context into account, there’s a good chance that little will come of your insights and recommendations.

As a researcher, you must always ask yourself: how do I ensure that my output aligns as closely as possible with the steps that follow the research?

How does collaborative prioritisation work in practice?

There are various ways to link customer insights to business objectives, depending on the resources available.

#1 Collaborative prioritisation in a workshop
If time and budget allow, we would always opt for a workshop in which you prioritise together with your stakeholder(s). You compare the most important user insights with the organisation’s objectives. You assess the impact of an opportunity or problem. You assign scores and prioritise. And you end up with a list of concrete action points that work for both the organisation and the user. 

So, after a workshop like this, you’ll have translated your research into a to-do list – and every task is also firmly linked to the organisation’s or team’s objectives.

Want to know more about our workshop format?

#2 Link the recommendations in your report to business objectives
If there’s no scope for prioritising together, you can still inspire the organisation. Imagine this: you have a recommendation that aligns very well with one of the organisation’s objectives. You can then refer to it in your report. You link the recommendation to the business objective. This instantly makes it much more concrete for the product owner and other stakeholders who will be implementing it.

#3 A thought-provoking question at the very last second
Even if there’s no time or budget – you can always do something. For example, on the final day, during the presentation of your findings, you could ask what the business objectives are: ​‘I’m sure you have objectives too – which insights and recommendations best align with what you want to achieve?’ This way, you make the most of the very last second of your research to align more closely with the organisation’s context.

We could go on for a while discussing how to make an impact with your research. Hopefully, our ideas will give you a nudge in the right direction.

Would you like to find out more or bounce some ideas off us?