For starters, it’s something that you do infrequently — maybe once a year, more likely once every couple of years. This means you don’t necessarily have a lot of experience in running this process, or it might have been a long time since you’ve done it before.
It’s also high stakes: if you buy software which doesn’t solve your team’s problems, or doesn’t work with your other software, or doesn’t meet your security or legal needs then you’re going to be at a loss.
Making the wrong decision can be an expensive lesson to learn.
One way we’ve previously talked about is to get your team to prioritize what they need via a checklist, where they indicate what features are most important for them prior to doing a vendor assessment.
Another way to reduce the risk of making a bad decision is to run a stakeholder survey.
A stakeholder survey is a way to identify the needs and views of everyone who is involved in a project. This method is best used in the early stages of a project to better understand background from different perspectives and define requirements, roles, and goals.
A well-executed stakeholder survey helps ensure every voice is heard, building trust and setting your team up for success.
Identifying what your stakeholders need in a vendor is a perfect use case.
Let’s say you’re in the market for a new customer research tool. If you’re a researcher, you probably have an idea of what you need; maybe you’re even comfortable enough to create a shortlist of vendors.
But how confident are you that your shortlist will align with what your fellow research and research ops teammates have in mind? And what about your non-research stakeholders — the folks on your team who do research or need research, but aren’t researchers by trade. From product managers and marketers to designers and engineers, they’re completely spread out across your org.
To align on vendor needs and pick a tool that’s built to endure your legal, compliance, and procurement processes, you first need to run a stakeholder survey. It will help you evaluate how your stakeholders think about and prioritize:
Create a free Great Question account here and survey your stakeholders using the free template below. Great Question makes it easy to customize the survey to your liking, share it with your team, and most importantly, identify what they need in a research tool.
1. On average, how often are you conducting research with your target users today?
2. In an ideal world, how often would you like to conduct research with your target users?
3. Which research methods do you currently use?
Select all that apply.
4. Which research methods would you use if you had access to a tool that supported them?
Select all that apply.
5. Tool selection criteria
For the next set of questions, think about how important each of the criteria are when determining which research tool to use.
6. How important is privacy and security in a research tool?
This includes things like protecting participant PII, GDPR compliance, HIPAA compliance, and single sign-on.
7. How important is supporting multiple research methods?
This includes things like interviews, surveys, focus groups, and unmoderated methods.
8. How important is having an attached research repository?
This means being able to store your data and artifacts in the same place you conduct your research.
9. How important is participant management?
This means being able to upload lists, track, update, manage, and recruit participants for research projects.
10. How important is having an integrated scheduling tool?
This means being able to schedule research in the same tool you use to conduct it.
11. How important is having integrated incentive management?
This means being able to send incentives to participants in the same tool you use to conduct research.
12. Which of the following additional features do you look for in a research tool?
Select all that apply.
13. What else should we be thinking about as a team regarding our research infrastructure?
(Short answer)
Jack is the Senior Content Lead at Great Question, the end-to-end research platform for customer-centric teams. Previously, he led content marketing and strategy as the first hire at two insurtech startups, Breeze and LeverageRx. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
