Click on a frequently asked question below.

1. What is a Virtual Research Team?

2. What is the composition and background of a typical virtual research team?

3. Why do organizations need research support?

4. How do I monitor my team's output and productivity?

5. Why should organizations outsource their research activities?

6. What is Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)?

7. Will Research KPO be a threat to our jobs?

8. How about information confidentiality and security?

9. What is Secondary Research?

10. What is Primary Research?

11. What is Competitive Intelligence?

12. What is the difference between CI and market research?

13. Who needs CI?
    

14. How do I find information about my competitors?

15. How is CI related to corporate espionage?

16. What is SCIP?

17. How does GBRS conduct CI globally?

18. How does GBRS guarantee the accuracy of intelligence it collects?

1) What is a Virtual Research Team?

This is a group of research professionals whose main objective is to assist busy executives and managers with their information collection, processing and dissemination needs.  This team works off-site and has no administrative, HR or other overhead requirements or costs to set up.  The team size, member qualification, and work schedules can be tailored to fit your research requirements, and altered frequently to match your changing demands.

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2) What is the composition and background of a typical virtual research team?

• At the core of every research team is a group of Researcher, supervised (and supported) by an Analyst, and led by a Project Manager. 
• Researchers are collectors or aggregators of data or information.  They perform both secondary and primary research collection focusing on specific industries, markets, companies and issues around the world.  They receive regular training on the various collection techniques, and are evaluated periodically to gauge performance and proficiency.  Their objective is to produce evidence and substantiating data.
• Analysts are knowledge producers.  They receive data and information from Researchers and process these further to develop key insights, spot opportunities, surface threats, create matrices, perform logic checks, make charts & graphs, and other functions that will enhance the quality of the output - be it a report, a data table, a presentation file, or an executive summary.  Their objective is to work with the evidence and convert it to meaningful, actionable business knowledge or intelligence.
• Project Managers safeguard the whole production process.  They are ultimately responsible for report completion according to time, quality and resource stipulations.  They translate project requirements from clients into specific task components and ensure accurate execution.  They organize the team, recruit members, train Researchers & Analysts, motivate team members, troubleshoot problem areas, and develop alternative solutions when faced with obstacles or challenges.  They define & safeguard project quality & standards.  And they provide constant feedback and updates to clients through regular conference calls and e- mail.
• Every member of the research team has a college degree.  Many Analysts and Project Managers have either a second degree or a graduate degree.  Everyone is proficient with reading, writing and conversing in the English language.  Some members have a second or third language proficiency - like Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French or German.

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3) Why do organizations need research support?

Leading edge and competitive companies understand the value of having access to latest business knowledge or intelligence - on customers, markets, competitors, opportunities, threats, regulatory or technology changes.  With so much change happening around a company's business environment, it is easy to be blind-sided by developments, good or bad, that go unnoticed until it is too late.  In fact, many firms have built dedicated research departments, or distributed the research tasks among business units, or outsourced their research needs to specialist agencies or consultants.  Yet in spite of all these activities, personnel and external support, the 'need to know' simply far outweighs the available resources to access that knowledge.
The challenge for companies, big or small, is to find the right balance between the ever-growing demand for knowledge against the finite supply of research resources.

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4) How do I monitor my team's output and productivity?

Your dedicated virtual research team can be structured to provide you with regular performance reports  by frequency (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc), by team member, by activity or other monitoring parameter that you stipulate.  We also utilize online collaboration and project monitoring software that provides real-time activity and progress updates.

Furthermore, the whole team, particularly the Project Manager, can be immediately reached via telephone, or e-mail.  Typically during the earlier stages of a relationship, it is not uncommon for the team to have daily (even hourly in some instances) conference calls with their sponsors.  This gradually tapers off to a communication pattern or degree that is convenient and comfortable to both parties as the relationship stabilizes.

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5) Why should organizations outsource their research activities?

Available research resources or skills are often in limited supply within organizations, while information and knowledge requirements keep growing.  As such, companies find it practical to seek the help of external providers who either augment existing resources or bring in needed expertise not found internally.  Obtaining outsourced support accelerates production and takes the organization to their objective, without the headaches of having to build it themselves.

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6) What is Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)?

KPO is the next frontier in outsourcing that began decades ago, in the 60s and 70s, with outsourced manufacturing, then in the late 90s and early 2000, with business process outsourcing (BPO).  KPO focuses on a suite of higher-value support services that include software development, architectural design, financial analysis, and now business research.

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7) Will Research KPO be a threat to our jobs?

Absolutely not.  Research KPO is meant to provide assistance for firms who have limited research resources available to address rising knowledge requirements.  In our case, we provide an extra set of hands (or brains) to help you get the job done.  Oftentimes, we help companies and consulting firms with the data or information collection phase so that they can focus on more value-adding activities, like analysis and strategy development.  All of our project engagements over the past 6 years have been in a support capacity - and we are proud to say that no employees were fired or replaced because of our work.  In fact, we have helped many a small research team, a solo research manager, or a boutique consulting firm successfully carry out the job of 10 or 20 researchers over a limited period.  The only people relieved were our own researchers - at the completion of a project.

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8) How about information confidentiality and security?

All our work are considered proprietary and confidential.  As such we take extra steps to safeguard the information in our hands.  We sign confidentiality contracts, we insulate teams from potentially conflicting accounts, or in special cases we enter into exclusivity arrangements with key clients.

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9) What is Secondary Research?

A data collection methodology or approach that relies on reviewing printed or published information from websites, journals, newspapers, magazines, reports and other publications.

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10) What is Primary Research?

A collection method based on person-to-person dialogue, conversation or information exchange, carried out over the phone, via e-mail exchange, in chat rooms or at a live meeting.

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11) What is Competitive Intelligence?

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is managing knowledge external to one's organization for making sound educated decisions vital to growth or survival, within ethical and legal boundaries. CI is matched with strategy/decision- making to make the process of keeping abreast with change continuous.

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12) What is the difference between CI and market research?

Marketing research (MR) is just one dimension of CI that utilizes a specific set of collection methods only focused the demand side, the market.

CI is concerned on systems external to the organization, including other competitors, suppliers, distributors, business partners, government, lobby groups and the market or consumers. Through CI with its specialized and creative approaches, the organization achieves its goals and becomes more competitive.

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13) Who needs CI?

Regardless of function or department, executives and managers across the organization are given the task of ensuring the survival and growth of the business by making the right decisions every time.  In order to do this, they should be supplied with timely, accurate and useful intelligence on a continuous basis.

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14) How do I find information about my competitors?

No target will disclose company information publicly. Going to the target directly for competitive information is a mistake - one would either end up frustrated or find themselves crossing ethical and legal borders.

To accomplish this, one should find other individuals or groups who seek the same information about the target but for different purposes.

Example:

While Orient Computer Corporation (OCC) will never divulge its current and projected revenue data to any of its competitors, it may reveal the exact (or related) information to its suppliers (who must align their manufacturing plans with OCC), its distributors (who must plan their fleet utilization, logistics and warehousing around the current and projected operations of OCC), the government trade bureau (who provides incentives to OCC in relation to its business size), the customs bureau (that processes OCC's importation requirements), the labor union (who negotiates for salaries & benefits depending on OCC's performance), the investment banker (who handles the financing for OCC's operations), and many more.

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15) How is CI related to corporate espionage?

Espionage has no room in CI. In business, it is carried out by characters who have neither the knowledge nor the skill to carry out proper CI research.

CI may derive some of its techniques from the government intelligence agencies but it gives ethics more emphasis. Interestingly, government intelligence agencies justify the use of espionage for national security and survival especially during the Cold War.

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16) What is SCIP?

The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals is a global association of CI practitioners, academics and consultants who are dedicated to the furtherance of ethical business intelligence practices. 

More information are found from their website at www.scip.org.

GBRS strictly adheres to the SCIP Ethics guidelines in the conduct of its research activities

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17) How does GBRS conduct CI globally?

GBRS has established an elaborate intelligence structure around the world, functioning through:

The intelligence research nerve center in Manila, Philippines, staffed by full-time, multi-lingual, experienced researchers, analysts and project managers

A network of field researchers, interviewers and data collectors based locally in each major market around the world

Using various collection methods and contact points, GBRS is able to handle multi- country regional or global projects simultaneously at very competitive costs.

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18) How does GBRS guarantee the accuracy of intelligence it collects?

GBRS maintains a policy that any intelligence it reports must have been provided by at least two or three independent, objective and qualified sources.  To ensure this, GBRS conducts random quality inspection of the interviews being conducted in the field.  Two teams conduct intelligence interviews from the central office and in- country.

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