4 Lessons Learned From Conducting Industry Research

And boy, was it a doozy. We collected and analyzed over 4 million data points across four cities and over 20 business categories to understand how the local algorithm works in the financial industry. It took 8 months, 10 team members and many hours. And I'm extremely proud of the team that put this together (seriously, check this out).When we first launched this study, we thought it would be a relatively simple process. Obtain data, analyze data, write information, publish. How hard could that be?Turns out it was a lot harder than expected! So, I thought I'd share our lessons learned with all of you so that when you embark on creating your own industry study, you can better manage your own expectations than we managed ours.Lesson #1: It will take longer than expected.We were…ambitious with our first project schedule. We originally planned to launch Egypt Phone Numbers List this thing within 12 weeks. I think we could have hit that release date if that had been the only thing the team was focused on for those 12 weeks, but balancing that with client work (which always takes priority) has been turned out to be a challenge for everyone involved. We all spent a lot of late nights getting there, and in the end it took about twice as long as expected.My biggest tip is to schedule yourself blocks of time to really get into the flow when working on a project like this. I'm a big fan of Cal Newport's 'deep work' concept and it kept us going. This type of analysis requires a different level of concentration than responding to emails or working on a content audit; give yourself space in your schedule to enter this free space and progress.Lesson 2: Writers, analysts, designers, and marketers need to collaborate throughout the process.It seems obvious, but let me explain our missteps. Here's what we tried first:We had an analyst (who is an SO) go through the Power BI file and pull out correlation factors, city and industry specific information, and data points that were found to be outliers .We have informed our marketing team and some industry publications that this is in the works so that we can take advantage of promotional opportunities. In retrospect, it was premature.Then we scheduled our writers (who are also SOs) to interpret this information and write the analysis.Then we planned to pass it on to our editors and designers to spruce it up, and to our marketing team to promote it.In theory, this seemed like an efficient way to manage this process and avoid unnecessary blockages in the publishing process.In practice, this resulted in repeated analytical efforts, meetings to review results, and long email threads trying to explain things to people who weren't included in those meetings. The authors struggled to write a coherent explanation of the insights the analyst drew without having done the analysis themselves. We managed to attract designers both too early and too late in the creative process, which led to some confusion about the visual needs of the asset.