Confirmit's Mobile Research Future, Henning Hansen and Dave King discuss the next Market Research Frontier
Posted by
Eric Bell on Mon, Oct 17, 2011 @ 09:59 PM
Leading The Way In Mobile Feedback Solutions
There is no question that mobile feedback is one of the hottest new methods of market research that in-house researchers are using and that full-service firms are deploying to attract new customers. The ability to capture emotional reactions to client products in real time is extremely useful in gaining consumer insight.
Last month Confirmit, an industry leader in feedback and multi-mode survey analytics, announced the acquisition of Techneos, a global leader in mobile market research.
I had the opportunity to interview both Henning Hansen the CEO of Confirmit, and Dave King the former Founder and President of newly aquired mobile feedback experts Techneos Systems, now King will lead Confirmit's Mobile Feedback division as Executive Vice President of Confirmit Mobile Solutions. Here is what they had to say...
EB: Why the merger between Techneos and Confirmit?
HH: The acquisition adds a comprehensive, feature-rich mobile component to our multi-channel Horizons technology platform and positions us for expansion in the fast-growing mobile engagement channel. We have been following the mobile space for some years and several of our clients spoke highly of Techneos. I personally met Dave for the first time back in December 2009 and was very impressed with the company and its highly-skilled people.
DK: Confirmit and Techneos very much complement each other and our relationship with Confirmit grew organically over time. We are both constantly seeking the best solutions for our customers so bringing together these two best in-class technologies makes sense from a business and customer perspective.
EB: It’s very interesting to watch the landscape transition as companies merge and partner. Last year’s trend and this year’s trend involved the largest online sample providers merging – it appears, that market research solution providers that can quickly adopt and figure out the mobile research landscape and how it applies to client needs will lead the way in 2012 innovation. Will the companies operate separately or integrate?
HH: The newly combined business will operate as Confirmit, putting best-in-breed end-to-end feedback and market research capabilities in the hands of organizations that seek to improve business processes.
Our intent is to turn Vancouver into a center of excellence for mobile development for Confirmit worldwide. Companies looking to deploy comprehensive, multi-channel programs will be able to benefit from the combined power of these best-of-breed technology platforms, enabling customers to take full advantage of the mobile channel and engage with respondents in a highly intuitive and immediate manner.
EB: Will Confirmit use the Vancouver facility as a lab or best practices hub for training its client base or is there a plan to teach the industry best practices in Mobile Research Surveying?
DK: Vancouver will be the center of excellence for all mobile initiatives within Confirmit. The core mobile research and development team for mobile will reside in Vancouver with access to the significant development resources in Russia and Oslo. With over 100 developers we have the largest development team in the industry – we will leverage that to move mobile initiatives forward. Confirmit has a robust, global training and support organization that addresses the needs of customers in more 50 Countries and users in more than 100 countries. We will scale the mobile training and support model to leverage this capability. We have also identified mobile point specialists around the world that will have the mandate to promote and share mobile best practices with the industry.
EB: How does your team think that the merger will affect the Market Research industry? What does this opportunity mean for the Mobile Research segment?
HH: Every day the mobile channel takes another step toward the forefront of feedback collection and market research. People aren’t always at their computers, but most of them won’t go anywhere without their mobile phones. As companies compete to gain deeper, more relevant insights about customers, they will increasingly invest in the mobile channel for gathering real-time, locationally-aware customer feedback.
Market Research is constantly evolving so mobile is another way of adapting to that change. With mobile research, you must excite, involve, listen and entertain if you want to maintain engagement — mobile users will disengage faster than from any other medium. We intend for mobile to be personal, relevant and timely or consumers won’t be engaged.
DK: Mobile has transitioned from a ‘would like to have’ to a ‘must have’ channel in any progressive, comprehensive voice of the customer strategy and now we need to focus on design and implementation that is specific to that channel.
The powerful combination of Techneos with Confirmit’s robust market-leading solution promises to advance the mobile engagement market. Confirmit’s end-to-end platform will set a new standard for scalable multi-channel enterprise-class customer feedback and market research programs that drive business process improvement.
EB: Can you give us some insight into the unified product offering?
HH: Confirmit provides a comprehensive yet simple way to gather and integrate feedback from employees, customers and market research panels at the point of experience. With Techneos technology, customers use mobile apps to pose relevant, real-time questions in a respondent’s preferred environment. Using mobile survey, feedback, panel, ethnography, face-to-face and digital diary solutions on any mobile devices, they can gather data about peoples’ expectations, motivations and intentions in over 200 languages.
DK: Confirmit’s new unified product offering will design customer engagement strategies to exploit what mobile will offer by taking advantage of capture and display of photo, video and audio. It will include GPS capabilities with location based services, barcode capture and be able to report and compile all of this information into one streamlined platform.
EB: It’s clear to me that Confirmit has thought out mobile strategy. I will be interested to see how your strategy plays out against innovating technology like OnePoint Mobile Surveys and Kinesis Survey Technology. I predict that Confirmit will be the dominating mobile force in the market research industry in 2012. Either way it will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction is this time next year.
Are there any new technology or innovation releases that your team would like to share?
HH: The first phase of integrating the two product lines are well underway and we are making Confirmit’s well established and very feature rich reporting and dashboard tool, Confirmit Reportal, fully integrated with the mobile offerings that we now have in place.
DK: We have a well deserved reputation for advancing the mobile data collection landscape for market research and corporate clients. You can be assured that the combined companies will even more aggressively make industry leading advances. We have a number of interesting developments, beyond integration that we will introduce in the coming months – stay tuned.
EB: Will the Confirmit mobile product set be in the cloud or software based?
DK: Current offerings include SMS – mobile browser and application based offerings. These solutions are delivered through both license and cloud based software as a service offerings. We will continue to offer a complete set of offerings for all platforms; all mobile modes and both license and cloud.
EB: If our members would like to connect with Confirmit or learn more about industry best practices for mobile surveying what is the best way connect with your firm?
HH: Our office in Vancouver will be the center of excellence for development and Dave King will be heading up our Mobile division. He will also be responsible for making sure that the great experience that we now have in mobile surveying is shared and transferred to our eight other offices.
DK: I’m delighted to build out the mobile capabilities within Confirmit and to establish leading best practices for the industry. I will continue to be available and can also draw on other subject matter experts.
EB: Henning and Dave, thank you for your time. It was an honor to interview both of you.
About Confirmit
Confirmit provides software that enables organizations to conduct Customer Feedback, Employee Feedback, and Market Research programs. Find out more about our management team, how to contact us, and how you can join us.