Market research analysts are a specialised role within marketing. Whereas we're all concerned with marketing and business problems, analysts contribute deep domain knowledge of data, analysis techniques, and problem solving ability.

Despite this, a fair percentage of analyst workload is involved with routine common tasks. Senior analysts are constantly evaluating their processes and common tasks, looking for ways to increase efficiency. It is possible to take this approach even further into providing full data services. This article will discuss these opportunities, and how they fit into the career path of an analyst.

Identifying patterns in the data

When first starting out as a junior analyst, your main motivation is (or should be) fear. Fear?! Yes, fear of getting it wrong. The myriad of steps and transformations between raw data outputs and report should be keeping you up at night. At least, that's the way it was for me! Seeing firsthand the results of incorrectly reported data, to your professional status, to that of your colleagues and company, can be gut wrenching.

There could be entire series written on various learnings, mistakes and analysis peculiarities (did you know that loading CSV files in Microsoft Excel then saving them could corrupt certain data formats?). There will be mistakes, learn from them.

After several years as an analyst, making fewer mistakes, you may start learning about advanced market research topics. Techniques such as weighting, statistical testing, driver analysis, maybe even some speciality analysis such as choice modelling. When provided analysis briefs, you start to help filling in the gaps (did you want weighting with that?).

Moving on to senior analyst, you now have a good command of data and analysis tools. You are better able to communicate analysis techniques, which makes you an asset in training new analysts and in client presentations. While you don't have full visibility on what consultants or clients do, you are starting to notice commonalities and patterns in their requests.

Where to from here?

Innovation!

Start writing the processes that do your job for you. Start to productise the analysis service you are providing. What was once the most stressful part of your job; making sure the raw data inputs correctly transform to reporting outputs, should be viewed as an opportunity to standardise and possibly automate.

What this does is moves your role from someone who works with data directly, to someone that manages data through abstractions. This approach can increase accuracy, reduce time taken to perform tasks, and allow more junior analysts to approach tasks with confidence. In turn, this frees up your time to focus on further process improvements.

You may next start turning attention to broadening the processes to handle more diverse range of requests. Eventually, many jobs will fit the pattern of your process, and the remainder will be bespoke work. We're always looking to give clients the best results. If a bespoke analysis is required to get that, it is what we do. However, a good standardised solution can offer better value through lower costs.

In the Evolved Analytics team, we're constantly evolving our driver analysis methodology and process. We've recently completed scripting our best process yet, which allows for weighted sampling, missing data handling and multiple iterations and variance testing. Beyond this, we're looking to democratise this process, whereby consultants, analysts, developers and clients can utilise the techniques easily.

You can find more information here; http://www.evolvedanalytics.com.au/analysis/drivers/about