Michelle’s Story
Michelle has seen some big changes in the market research industry since she first started as a researcher over three decades ago. In particular, clients are now expecting researchers to turn around reports and projects quicker than ever. Michelle answers that challenge by constantly seeking opportunities to refine and speed up processes, while continuing to add even more value for her clients.
“I’m most passionate about brand and advertising research. There’s a lot of scope to constantly improve our processes and that’s what we always work towards.”
MICHELLE MERCER
Measured and meaningful
Michelle celebrates her thirtieth year in market research this year! A highly experienced data analyst, Michelle’s career has seen her work for Roy Morgan, Nielsen, and now Lewers Research. At Lewers, Michelle works on everything from data processing to segmentation and customer insights. She’s passionate about delivering the best quality insights she can for her clients while making reporting more efficient. Her analysis software of choice is Displayr.
How Michelle uses Displayr
Delivering results in a timely and effective manner was quite the challenge before Displayr - involving a whole heap of manual labor. For her ongoing advertising research, reports not only had to be manually updated but the entire process had to be repeated when the next wave of data came in. They were also pretty unwieldy, with a single bi-annual report involving over 140 PowerPoint slides. Even more concerning was the worrying feeling that clients weren’t receiving the best insights they could since manually reproducing reports demanded the bulk of her time.
With Displayr, Michelle has been able to dramatically cut down on the time it takes to create and update reports, delivering them to her clients much faster. She’s can now rely on Displayr to do most of the data checking, reducing the chances of human error and saving her countless hours.
“A report that would’ve taken a week to do previously is now ready in two days. Now we can spend that time looking at what the data is saying and add more value for the client.”
MICHELLE MERCER
Artwork by Carmelo Blandino
Empowering her clients
Remember that aforementioned 140 slides report? Not only was Michelle able to reduce that from a week to two days work, but by transforming the bi-annual PowerPoint report into an updatable dashboard, she was able to cut it down from 140 slides to around 30 online pages using hyperlinks, drilldowns, and filters! Her clients are thrilled that they now have the freedom to access and easily navigate their data and reports.
Michelle has empowered her clients to take a more active role and self-serve. Having an interactive dashboard means they can now explore filters and look at results in a much more elegant and intuitive fashion. She says “once our clients started using the dashboard and saw how easy it was to navigate around, they actually got more involved with the reporting!”
Keeping up with innovation
Michelle knows that the market research and consumer insights industry will continue to change at a rapid pace. She and the team at Lewers are focused on keeping up with innovation and are constantly on the hunt for new ways to deliver quality insights for their clients. Michelle sees consumer insight analysts continuing to have a vital role in the future - using their expertise and skills to help others navigate the masses of available data.
