Feeding the appetite for growth

The partnership between TD SYNNEX and the ‘blue ocean’ growth consulting firm, MarketsandMarkets has seen the first market research as a service (MRaaS) proposition made available – we spoke to Krishnan Chatterjee, chief operating officer at MarketsandMarkets about the service and how it can be used to help partners deliver more value to their growth-hungry customers.

Whatever economic challenges the country might be facing, Krishnan Chatterjee, chief operating officer at MarketsandMarkets, believes the UK’s appetite for growth is one of the strongest in the world. That’s something to be proud of – and it’s also an opportunity, not only for his company, but for TD SYNNEX and its partners.

Earlier this year, the research and consultancy firm and TD SYNNEX announced a partnership to offer the first market research as a service (MRaaS) proposition to the UK market. The idea is to give companies access to in-depth market information and expertise on a subscription basis. This will allow them to thoroughly explore and research new market potential and make smarter investment decisions.

The service provides access to MarketsandMarkets’ huge and unique KnowledgeStore – an AI-powered, cloud-based repository of information and insights on more than 30,000 micro markets, as well as the company’s own expert consultants. It’s a simple enough – though quite different - proposition and one that Krishnan Chatterjee feels that the UK’s growth-hungry companies can use to really good effect.

‘As a subscription client, they can sit on the [KnowledgeStore] platform and sample market research. If you are a chemicals company, for example, and you are looking at the opportunity in polymers, you can discover and explore that in all its depth and detail. You can access information that you would otherwise have to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds and many months of research, to acquire and collate.’

A lot of solutions are focused around improving efficiencies and reducing cost – we are focused on the other side of transformation, on improving growth

Driven by digital transformation

But why would IT partners sell such a service? The answer is that it is closely aligned to digital transformation and enables partners to have higher level, strategically focused conversations with customers about how transformation can drive their business growth.

Digitalisation is encouraging companies to look at growth opportunities in new and adjacent markets, says Krishnan Chatterjee. ‘Yes, technology is transformational, but at the end of the day that has to manifest itself in your P&L. A lot of solutions are focused around improving efficiencies and reducing cost – we are focused on the other side of transformation, on improving growth.’

An IT solutions provider partner that ,in addition to the technology, can offer a service that provides insight into how the organisation can put its digitally transformed systems and processes to work in identifying and driving new opportunities, will have a real edge.

There is a tremendous depth of information within the MarketsandMarkets KnowledgeStore. As well as information and research on hundreds of industry sectors, it contains intelligence on 80,000 companies globally. There is information on megatrends such as sustainability, AI & ML, genomics, IoT and scores of other areas of development and change. You can drill down and look at specific sectors or geographies in depth. As well as research and data, there are white papers, thought leadership pieces, a whole panoply of information about the market ecosystem and what’s driving demand.

If there is any new technology or market that you are looking at, the chances are MarketsandMarkets has been the first to research it from a business potential perspective

Blue ocean alternative

Quite a lot of the information comes from MarketsandMarkets’ own research reports. The firm has more than 1000 researchers and publishes around 120 major reports every month, so it is constantly updating the KnowledgeStore with information that simply isn’t available anywhere else.

There is a wealth of historical as well as forward-looking data. MarketsandMarkets has been around since 2010 and is firmly established as a provider of research and growth consulting. Today the firm styles itself as a ‘blue ocean alternative’ to the likes of McKinsey & Co. (The term ‘blue ocean’ is used to refer to uncontested markets and unknown or as-yet undiscovered industries or innovations). If there is any new technology or market that you are looking at, the chances are MarketsandMarkets has been the first to research it from a business potential perspective. Krishnan Chatterjee estimates that around $400 million worth of research is contained within this unique resource.

We are enabling people at the coalface to really deploy strategies and take action that can drive growth

Everything interconnected

‘With all that research uploaded and interconnected on the platform, you're able to explore different market scenarios. That’s tremendously valuable. In today's world, no one is an island, everything is interconnected. With our platform, we’ve started democratising intelligence and democratising growth, so now, anybody who's looking at new markets – at all levels across the organisation – can get the insights they need. We are enabling people at the coalface to really deploy strategies and take action that can drive growth.’

Having access to this wealth of external intelligence and information is not only useful to researchers and strategists, it could also prove to be invaluable to sales teams addressing new markets – and to those setting goals and targets. It can all be fed into the business intelligence and analytics engines, said Krishnan Chatterjee.

‘External intelligence is crucial, yet most decisions and investments are made using only internal data. A lot of businesses use analytics to study their own information and try to make sense of the patterns emerging from that. We're doing exactly the same outside the enterprise. We're making sense of patterns emerging in the world in which you operate.”

For partners that are having discussions with clients about digital transformation and taking a consultative approach, MRaaS should be a really good fit

Demonstrating strategic relevance

For the TD SYNNEX partner, the attraction of offering MRaaS is the added-value and strategic relevance that they are able to demonstrate. It enables partners to relate conversations directly to customer growth. This is much more important now as digital transformation spreads out the decision making on IT across the executive board.

‘You need to have engagement at the highest level possible about the growth dimension’, said Krishnan Chatterjee. ‘That’s of enormous consequence to UK businesses and if you can do that, you can create that strategic relevance and helps their business on multiple levels.’

For partners that are having discussions with clients about digital transformation and taking a consultative approach, MRaaS should be a really good fit, as it will enable them to elevate their discussions even more and ‘communicate the culture of exponential growth,’ said Krishnan Chatterjee.

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