For clients who require more tightly-specified work we offer bespoke qualitative and quantitative research and analysis.
Gathering data is one of those things that looks straightforward. You ask questions of statistical sources or of people, put together the answers, and, hey presto, you have your answers.
Like many other things in life, however, the Devil is in the detail.
Getting information may look easy but gathering reliable, useful, pertinent data on which to base real-world plans and policies is a little more testing. Ask the wrong questions, ask the wrong people, or fail to analyse the results properly and you might as well burn fifty-pound notes in the street. Like many tasks, you generally get what you pay for, although “value for money” does not always mean that the more you pay the better the outcomes.
In most cases, gathering and analysing data are jobs best placed in the hands of experts. It costs a bit more up-front but saves a great deal in the long term. Experts can save more than just cash. The wrong information can sometimes look enticingly like the “real thing” but it is governed by the old IT saying: “Garbage in, garbage out”. Poor intelligence fed into the decision-making process delivers poor results. Misguided decisions can mean the total failure of policies and even of companies and organisations.
Broadly, information comes in two flavours: quantitative and qualitative – words and numbers. But it’s the quality of both that tells in the end.