Steve Wills MRS Best Paper Award

Conference-winning paper has 'huge implications' for insight industry, say judges

The 2004 award for Best Paper at the Market Research Society's annual conference was won by Steve Wills, Managing Director of Customer Insight Solutions, and Pauline Williams, Senior Controller, Market Research, at Nationwide.

The paper entitled "Insight as a strategic asset - the opportunity and the stark reality" was described by the judges as, "A clear, comprehensive, well thought through, well presented paper, of extreme importance for insight management within client organisations at a strategic level".

They continued: "It has huge implications for client companies and the way agencies will in the future have to interact with them, and for how the profession will have to organise itself in this new world".

The paper (available here ) called on the industry to recognise that customer insight is much more than a new name for market research and that market research is only one part of the bigger customer insight picture. It demonstrated the need for insight to be properly managed and communicated and for its value as a corporate strategic asset with a hard contribution to the bottom line to be recognised at top level. It called on the industry to set up a new body to manage and promote customer insight in its broadest sense.

The paper was a major talking point of the conference, prompting a wealth of questions and a lively floor discussion.

"This win is tremendous news for us," says Steve. "It demonstrates our achievement in helping to lead the industry forward through the management, application and communication of real, quantifiable, customer insight."

The paper coincides with the publication of a 144-page guide which maps out the way forward for the industry by showing how customer insight can be transformed into a clearly-defined discipline with quantifiable bottom-line benefits for businesses.

"The Guide to Best Practice in Customer Insight Management and Communication" is the first publication to define customer insight in detail and to show professionals how they can demonstrate the full value of insight as a key strategic asset.

The guide provides a detailed blueprint, with examples from UK industry, for delivering insight, communicating it effectively throughout the organisation and proving its ROI. It is based on a year-long study carried out by Steve Wills and Sally Webb with the backing of 12 major UK corporates. Co-prize winner Pauline Williams of Nationwide was the lead sponsor of this study.