We do love efficiency. And disintermediation, which originated in the banking industry in the 1960s, became an efficiency force to be reckoned with by the late 1990s. Very simply, it’s about cutting out the middleman and eliminating non-value add intermediaries in a supply chain. (When was the last time you used a travel agent?) In traditional research, every hand-off across the lifespan of a project is an opportunity for mistakes, and each hand-off adds time and cost. Not only that, every time a research project moves between different supplier entities – or simply from one business unit to another within the same research firm – it gets taxed with an incremental dollop of profit. For example, a large global research firm fielding a quantitative study in three global markets sources respondents from the same sample providers that we use at Mizzouri. But the internal department responsible for finding sample must make a profit, so they mark up the external supplier’s cost. Then each of the countries executing the research marks up those costs again. And the country originating the project marks things up yet again. Clients don’t get better sample in this model, but they certainly pay a lot more for it than they need to. The Mizzouri model doesn’t include middlemen. And with fewer links in the chain, we can reduce the risk of errors, deliver results faster, and reduce costs dramatically.

At Mizzouri, we thoroughly enjoy helping our clients navigate from A to Z. We just don’t believe we need to stop at all 24 letters in between to get there.

Toyota usually gets credit for pioneering this process transformation, but the origins of just in time (JIT) inventory trace as far back as Eli Whitney and Henry Ford. The model focuses on making sure a business has exactly what it needs but only when it needs it – thereby avoiding the carrying costs and increased prices associated with extra inventory. At Mizzouri, we’ve created our internal systems and processes with this in mind. We have a deep global pool of talented researchers, industry thought leaders, marketing experts, and business professionals. And they’re all enrolled in our variable compensation model, so when they’re not working on projects they’re not part of our cost structure.

This model is a proverbial win-win. It provides our experts with far greater flexibility and financial upside than they’d find in a typical corporate environment. And our clients love the model because it gives them access to top industry talent around the globe (and we mean really top talent) without having to pay the “inventory cost” associated with having great brains on our bench.

The same goes for technology. At our disposal are the most advanced and innovative technology solutions available, but we choose not to acquire the companies that have built and run them. We have strong partnership agreements in place, so our clients don’t pay for the overhead associated with holding and maintaining large technology platforms in-house. An additional benefit of this approach is that we’re not forcing these partners to change their own business models to meet our needs, which keeps them focused and affordable.

The idea is simple: deliver precisely the product or service that a customer wants, when he wants it. The model is equally simple: build a standard pre-assembly of core modules and leave the customized bits until the end of the assembly process. (And while you’re at it, use technology to drive down costs while adding warp-speed to supply chain coordination.) Call it mass customization or late stage differentiation. The point is that it speaks to a “customer of one” and takes Built to Order to a new level.

Who’s doing it? Dell and HP, for starters. Who isn’t? The automotive industry as a whole. And not surprisingly, the market research industry.

At Mizzouri, late stage differentiation is built into our process model, and we’ve created structures that are extremely flexible and scaleable. This enables us to design unique and tailored research solutions that have high quality and low cost built in from the very beginning. Our clients don’t pay for more than they actually need. Nor are they forced to buy standard, fixed products that are expensive because they haven’t achieved economies of scale. (In car parlance, imagine the expense incurred when producing a car to meet a demand that never materializes. The same is often true for proprietary, packaged market research products; “inventory” is expensive, and someone ultimately has to pay for it.)

Our core – our sample engine, survey engine, programming, data processing, technology, etc. – is part of one giant pipe from the very beginning. Customization is easy, whether that’s layering on qualitative, mobile, heat mapping, conjoint, 3-D virtual fly-throughs, or any other combination of methodologies. At Mizzouri, the opportunities for customization are virtually limitless.

Technologists are brilliant at what they do, and they’re able to deliver breakthrough innovation. They also require specific business models to deliver that innovation.

We don’t try to change them or their business models. Instead, we leverage their technology expertise while providing a bridge to the market research industry. We talk to them in their language, and you can talk to us in yours. We introduce them to a new industry, and we introduce you to breakthrough new ways to answer your business questions. Without question, we don’t chase technology for technology’s sake. We leverage it to solve problems you’ve never been able to solve before – or to solve them with dramatically higher quality and lower cost.

It’s not our strategy to acquire these technology specialists for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that we want to keep them pure. They do what they love and you gain access to best in class thinking in an incredibly dynamic field. And because we’re not stuck with legacy systems, we can move nimbly to newer, better, and more efficient systems as they emerge.