Industry: Network Security
Featured Methods: Field Interviews
A leader in network security had developed a product aimed at automating routine aspects of network configuration management, allowing network engineers to focus on more pressing, large-scale networking concerns within their organizations.
The company wanted to optimize their marketing efforts by learning about the real people, factors, events, needs, and resources involved in making information technology purchasing decisions. They wanted to better understand where the budget for networking solutions typically comes from, and if there are compelling events or initiatives that influence the purchases of key decision makers. They gave AnswerLab the challenge of developing a customer research solution that would provide the best insights into this very narrow, but diverse, segment of the technical buying market.
We suspected that in-person interviews would be too lengthy, too broad, and have too few respondents to provide the direct knowledge that our client was after. Instead, we conducted telephone interviews with network professionals, representing a vast range of job functions and industries. We focused on sets of consistent questions across a larger set of respondents that would enable a deeper, fuller analysis.
Working with a top-rated panel provider, we recruited a range of network professionals, from engineers and architects to managers and directors of IT operations, at companies with annual revenues over $750 million. Conducting telephone interviews let our moderators talk to networking professionals across the nation in a variety of work environments, diving directly into our client’s concerns using a moderator discussion guide centered on several key question clusters.
We found that decisions to purchase new IT products and services are inherently collaborative, and benefit from input at all organizational levels. Generally speaking, such decisions are not just made by those in managerial or director level roles. We also discovered that budgets for new, innovative technology products and services is nearly always available, even for IT departments who operate within set annual budgets. Armed with this information, in conjunction with our recommendations, our client was able to gain a first-mover advantage and present their network configuration product to the right market segment in a way that was most appealing to all network professions.
