About Us
You are what you think about.
Here's why we think common approaches to innovating customer experiences don't pay
off...and why our approach does.
Whyze Group grew out of the marketing research industry. Fifteen years ago, we
observed the difficulty organizations had in translating marketing research data into
meaningful improvements in customer experiences and business performance. We
asked, “What’s the relationship between company spending on marketing research and
business performance?”
We wondered, what's
the relationship
between research
spend and business
performance?
The Fortune 500 are by far the biggest marketing research spenders in the U.S.,
consuming the majority of $7 billion in research services annually. We hypothesized that
companies among the Fortune 500 might remain preeminent from decade to decade
given their advantage of huge research budgets. So, we tracked them.
We started with Fortune’s list for the year 1990 and then looked at the list ten years later.
We expected to see some churn, but not at the level we found. In those ten years, about
forty percent of the firms on the 1990 list disappeared. About 200 firms had been
displaced, absorbed or altogether tanked at the hands of competitors. In the next four
years, between 2000 and 2004, twenty-five percent of the Fortune 500 had churned.
These were household names; GTE, Hasbro, Ingersoll Rand, Nabisco Holdings, Paine
Weber and Ralston Purina. (Whyze Group internal research, 2005).
While our findings weren't conclusive, it raised challenges to the notion that more
research leads to more business success.
Then, in 2005, Booz Allen completed a study of the top 1,000 R&D spenders among
public companies globally. Based on Booz Allen’s analysis, they concluded, “Contrary to
conventional assumptions, R&D spending levels within the Global Innovation 1000 had
no apparent impact on sales growth, gross profit, operating profit, enterprise profit,
market capitalization, or total shareholder return.” (Bordia, R., Dehoff, K., Jurelzekski, B.,
“The Booz Allen Hamilton Global Innovation 1000: Money Isn’t Everything”, Strategy +
Business, Winter 2005, p. 5)
The myth of a causal relationship between research spend and corporate performance
still persists, but a growing body of empirical evidence runs contrary to this perception.
Another question we asked is, “What’s missing when marketing research fails to improve
business performance?”
Why Doesn't More
Research Produce
Better Business Results?
We asked managers in client organizations and colleagues in a variety of research firms
to give us their perspectives. Among the questions we asked was, “What percentage of
marketing research findings are actually applied?” While the answers varied, the most
common response was, “fifty percent”.
This is consistent with what we see at nearly every client organization that has asked us
to facilitate our Customer Experience Management Audit with their management teams.
Most corporate libraries contain reams of well-executed marketing research studies.
Most contain nuggets of insight that seem valuable on the surface. To understand the
value of these studies, we needed get a view of the context in which these studies were
commissioned.
What we found when interviewing managers at these firms is that these research reports
misaddressed key issues that managers were wrestling with at the time. In some
instances, we found that the research was misapplied, leading to dangerous actions.
One example was a company that had commissioned dial testing of its new TV
advertisements. Dial testing shows how viewers are responding to audio-visual
advertisements on a second-by-second basis. It shows emotional high and low points
as the ad is being absorbed. What it doesn’t show, and what managers needed to know
at the time, was how well this ad positioned the company against its competitors. The
dial testing showed high points in the ads where managers wanted them and company
made significant media buys. The ad tanked and was pulled at a cost of millions of
dollars to this company.
Malcolm Baldrige Stocks
Outperformed the S&P 500
by 3 to 1: Here's Why We
Think that Happened
Our convictions about how customer data translate into improved customer experiences
and business performance coalesced further when we looked at the performance of
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners. Malcolm Baldrige winners achieve
superior business results. During a ten year period, the portfolio of Malcolm Baldrige
winners' stocks outperformed the S&P 500 by a margin of 3-to-1. (See the NIST study
results.)
The Malcolm Baldrige Award isn't given to companies that simply collect reams of
customer data. It's awarded to companies that excel at applying what they learn about
customers.
There are hundreds of questions in the Malcolm Baldrige application that pertain to how
companies apply what they learn. An example of the questions that Malcolm Baldrige
applicants answer is, "How do you use voice-of-the-customer information and feedback
to become more customer-focused, to better satisfy customer needs and desires, and to
identify opportunities for innovation?"
We even interviewed Rick Kolster, Quality Manager at Solectron, a Malcolm Baldrige
winner. Rick gave us a ton of insights into what made Solectron a leader in its field. In
short, there was a process by which managers were imbued not only with customer
intelligence, but a means of applying it over and over again. Solectron is a compelling
example of a continuously learning organization.
Over the last decade, we at Whyze Group have evolved our thinking and our services.
We've learned what works...consistently and reliably. That's why we give our clients
opportunities to integrate customer experience discovery with customer experience
design. Learning goes hand in hand with applying what's been learned. We've been
researching and perfecting our methods for fifteen years.
We Integrate Customer
Experience Discovery with
Customer Experience
Design
As a result of the success we consistently help our clients achieve, Whyze Group is
sought out as an innovation partner by top companies, such as Rubbermaid, Nationwide
Insurance, Grainger, Zales and Humana. We’ve also been sought out by leaders in the
field of innovation and customer experience design. These include companies like
nGenera, Experience Engineering and Olsen-Zaltman.
We Practice What
We Preach
Whyze Group is the leader in enabling management teams to gain and apply insights in
innovating customer experiences. We are innovators ourselves:
Our Mission
Our mission is to enable agents of innovation to be successful. We help innovation
agents align company employees, partners and intermediaries to orchestrate
remarkable customer experiences.
Our mission reflects our values. We believe that all people are entitled to lead fulfilling
lives. We are committed to engaging our clients in ways that are fulfilling and productive.
When our clients are successful in delivering compelling customer experiences, there is
increased demand for their goods and services, which helps fulfill the needs of
employees, owners and partners.
Are you an agent of innovation? Read more about how Whyze Group will help you.
You are what you think about.
Here's why we think common approaches to innovating customer experiences don't pay
off...and why our approach does.
Whyze Group grew out of the marketing research industry. Fifteen years ago, we
observed the difficulty organizations had in translating marketing research data into
meaningful improvements in customer experiences and business performance. We
asked, “What’s the relationship between company spending on marketing research and
business performance?”
We wondered, what's
the relationship
between research
spend and business
performance?
The Fortune 500 are by far the biggest marketing research spenders in the U.S.,
consuming the majority of $7 billion in research services annually. We hypothesized that
companies among the Fortune 500 might remain preeminent from decade to decade
given their advantage of huge research budgets. So, we tracked them.
We started with Fortune’s list for the year 1990 and then looked at the list ten years later.
We expected to see some churn, but not at the level we found. In those ten years, about
forty percent of the firms on the 1990 list disappeared. About 200 firms had been
displaced, absorbed or altogether tanked at the hands of competitors. In the next four
years, between 2000 and 2004, twenty-five percent of the Fortune 500 had churned.
These were household names; GTE, Hasbro, Ingersoll Rand, Nabisco Holdings, Paine
Weber and Ralston Purina. (Whyze Group internal research, 2005).
While our findings weren't conclusive, it raised challenges to the notion that more
research leads to more business success.
Then, in 2005, Booz Allen completed a study of the top 1,000 R&D spenders among
public companies globally. Based on Booz Allen’s analysis, they concluded, “Contrary to
conventional assumptions, R&D spending levels within the Global Innovation 1000 had
no apparent impact on sales growth, gross profit, operating profit, enterprise profit,
market capitalization, or total shareholder return.” (Bordia, R., Dehoff, K., Jurelzekski, B.,
“The Booz Allen Hamilton Global Innovation 1000: Money Isn’t Everything”, Strategy +
Business, Winter 2005, p. 5)
The myth of a causal relationship between research spend and corporate performance
still persists, but a growing body of empirical evidence runs contrary to this perception.
Another question we asked is, “What’s missing when marketing research fails to improve
business performance?”
Why Doesn't More
Research Produce
Better Business Results?
We asked managers in client organizations and colleagues in a variety of research firms
to give us their perspectives. Among the questions we asked was, “What percentage of
marketing research findings are actually applied?” While the answers varied, the most
common response was, “fifty percent”.
This is consistent with what we see at nearly every client organization that has asked us
to facilitate our Customer Experience Management Audit with their management teams.
Most corporate libraries contain reams of well-executed marketing research studies.
Most contain nuggets of insight that seem valuable on the surface. To understand the
value of these studies, we needed get a view of the context in which these studies were
commissioned.
What we found when interviewing managers at these firms is that these research reports
misaddressed key issues that managers were wrestling with at the time. In some
instances, we found that the research was misapplied, leading to dangerous actions.
One example was a company that had commissioned dial testing of its new TV
advertisements. Dial testing shows how viewers are responding to audio-visual
advertisements on a second-by-second basis. It shows emotional high and low points
as the ad is being absorbed. What it doesn’t show, and what managers needed to know
at the time, was how well this ad positioned the company against its competitors. The
dial testing showed high points in the ads where managers wanted them and company
made significant media buys. The ad tanked and was pulled at a cost of millions of
dollars to this company.
Malcolm Baldrige Stocks
Outperformed the S&P 500
by 3 to 1: Here's Why We
Think that Happened
Our convictions about how customer data translate into improved customer experiences
and business performance coalesced further when we looked at the performance of
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners. Malcolm Baldrige winners achieve
superior business results. During a ten year period, the portfolio of Malcolm Baldrige
winners' stocks outperformed the S&P 500 by a margin of 3-to-1. (See the NIST study
results.)
The Malcolm Baldrige Award isn't given to companies that simply collect reams of
customer data. It's awarded to companies that excel at applying what they learn about
customers.
There are hundreds of questions in the Malcolm Baldrige application that pertain to how
companies apply what they learn. An example of the questions that Malcolm Baldrige
applicants answer is, "How do you use voice-of-the-customer information and feedback
to become more customer-focused, to better satisfy customer needs and desires, and to
identify opportunities for innovation?"
We even interviewed Rick Kolster, Quality Manager at Solectron, a Malcolm Baldrige
winner. Rick gave us a ton of insights into what made Solectron a leader in its field. In
short, there was a process by which managers were imbued not only with customer
intelligence, but a means of applying it over and over again. Solectron is a compelling
example of a continuously learning organization.
Over the last decade, we at Whyze Group have evolved our thinking and our services.
We've learned what works...consistently and reliably. That's why we give our clients
opportunities to integrate customer experience discovery with customer experience
design. Learning goes hand in hand with applying what's been learned. We've been
researching and perfecting our methods for fifteen years.
We Integrate Customer
Experience Discovery with
Customer Experience
Design
As a result of the success we consistently help our clients achieve, Whyze Group is
sought out as an innovation partner by top companies, such as Rubbermaid, Nationwide
Insurance, Grainger, Zales and Humana. We’ve also been sought out by leaders in the
field of innovation and customer experience design. These include companies like
nGenera, Experience Engineering and Olsen-Zaltman.
We Practice What
We Preach
Whyze Group is the leader in enabling management teams to gain and apply insights in
innovating customer experiences. We are innovators ourselves:
- Marketing ROI scenario modeling. In the late 90’s, we were among the first to
apply ROI scenario modeling outside the context of direct marketing.
- Developing training for corporate innovators. One example is our workshop,
Influencing Organizational Change with Market Intelligence, which we delivered at
several national conferences.
- Open innovation. We began participating in innovation networks long before this
became vogue. This has led to highly productive partnerships, intellectual capital
and value for our clients.
Our Mission
Our mission is to enable agents of innovation to be successful. We help innovation
agents align company employees, partners and intermediaries to orchestrate
remarkable customer experiences.
Our mission reflects our values. We believe that all people are entitled to lead fulfilling
lives. We are committed to engaging our clients in ways that are fulfilling and productive.
When our clients are successful in delivering compelling customer experiences, there is
increased demand for their goods and services, which helps fulfill the needs of
employees, owners and partners.
Are you an agent of innovation? Read more about how Whyze Group will help you.
| Copyright 2008 Whyze Group, Inc. All rights reserved. |
 |  |  |  |
| Please pardon our appearance! Our graphics department is working to make our site warm and welcoming again, but you can still read about us here! |