B2B Research Conference 2024

09.00 Registration & coffee

09.45 Welcome from the Chair

James Endersby, CEO, Opinium

10.00 Buckle up; the B2B insight revolution is here

Fraudulent responses and subpar research experiences are a significant issue in B2B research. But could AI present a very real solution to this?

In this session, Verve will share its pioneering journey with GenAI simulations and show how combining Gen AI with high-quality customer data brings the opportunity to create ‘Intelligent Personas’ – lifelike audiences that can replicate, with statistical confidence, what real people would say if asked.
Hear how AI and intelligent personas can be used to bring customer segmentations to life, build and interact with industry or topic expert advisors, measure and refine concepts and creatives, uncover hidden narratives in NPS/CX data and democratise insight more broadly.

Rich Preedy, Executive Director, Head of Artificial Intelligence, VERVE

10.30 How Sage launched its first B2B Community – and what they did with it

Online communities are a ubiquitous consumer approach, rarely used in B2B. In this session, Sage and Jigsaw will demonstrate how they can also be effective for business audiences.

Hear how Sage, one of the leading global SaaS accounts companies, set up and used its first B2B community of small business owners to conduct a research programme to feed into the launch of its first sustainability product – Sage Earth.

Examine the research journey, gain top tips for building a B2B community and take a deep dive into the Sage Earth research project.

Alex Johnston, Commercial Director, STRAT7 Jigsaw

Alex McDougall, Customer Insight Manager, Sage

11.00 Morning refreshments

11.30 Navigating new waters: embedding insights on evolving buyer journeys across Maersk

Maersk is the second biggest shipping company in the world and has been on a transformational journey of digitalisation and modernisation as it transitions from predominantly ocean shipping to connecting its customers' global supply chains. Maersk has new services to sell, new buyers to engage with and new experiences to design, all within the context of a rapidly evolving workplace and marketplace. In such a dynamic environment, how do you get constantly evolving buying knowledge into the hands of 3000+ sales colleagues, designers, marketers, CX pros and product owners?

This is the journey of how the Maersk insight team launched a massive multi-modal research project with hundreds of logistics professionals to create a shared framework. Hear how it brought insights into the hands of colleagues across the business and is being used for numerous initiatives: driving new product development, digital experiences, improvements in CX and much more.

Mireille Patoine, Strategic Customer Insights Leader, Maersk

12.00 Improving global business cultural fluency

Tough economic challenges and increased globality is bringing exciting changes to how we view B2B relationships. This recent study, a joint effort between the International Chamber of Commerce, Jus Connect, and McCann Truth Central, shows how emotions and cultural differences play a big role in business deals across the world.

The research looked into how businesses connect on an emotional level and how culture affects the way they start new deals, develop ongoing partnerships and how they manage friction and disputes when things go wrong. It found four broad types of business cultures each with its own way of handling business and solving problems - and how these vary around the world.

Hear key outcomes from the research and gain insights into how to improve business cultural fluency.

Gideon Wilkins, Executive VP of Commercial Intelligence, McCann Truth Central

Senior representative, Jus Connect

Senior representative International Chamber of Commerce

12.30 Lunch

13.30 Moody’s global thought leadership: adoption of AI within risk and compliance

This case study will explore Context+ and Moody's B2B research into the adoption of AI within the risk and compliance sector, laying the foundations for Moody’s to build thought leadership in the field. The project aimed to understand the benefits, challenges, and concerns associated with AI across financial services, corporations, and governments.

Join the project team to examine the key challenges the team overcame to deliver this, three phase, global research programme and find out how the insight was brought to life for internal stakeholders and external audiences.

Paul Nola, Partner, Context+

Dr Christine Bailey, Marketing Director, Moody’s KYC

14.00 Helping UK SMEs unlock the value of digital advertising

Digital advertising and SMEs have a symbiotic relationship. However, recent economic uncertainty has squeezed SMEs, meaning that every marketing pound must deliver.

In this session you will hear how IAB UK worked to tangibly help small business owners understand how to use digital advertising effectively so that they could get the most out of their investment. Hear the headlines from the research and explore how research findings informed the creation of a free-to-use, interactive tool to help SMEs better understand and use digital advertising.

Nick Seeley, Strategy Director, MTM

Hannah Bewley, Senior Research & Measurement Manager, IAB UK

14.30 Winning a more prominent seat for customer insight at the executive table

In January 2024, the Sage executive board met to agree on a new five-year strategy to supercharge growth of this £12bn business. Hanna and Dan will share how they successfully embedded a compelling new customer narrative at the highest levels of the organisation to ensure the strategy was rooted in deep customer understanding; and how, in doing so, they won Customer Insight a more prominent seat at the executive table.

Dan Coombes, Head of Activation, Basis

Hanna Wilcox, VP Customer Insight, Sage

15.00 Afternoon refreshments

15.30 The big B2B debate: B2B research is no different to conducting B2C research

Both B2B and B2C research share the fundamental goal of understanding customer needs, preferences, and behaviours to drive business success. To what extent should researchers approach them in the same way or adapt them to suit the unique characteristics of each market segment? Join two teams as they debate the similarities and differences between conducting B2B and B2C research.

Chaired by: Stephen Bairfelt, Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director, Purple MR 

&, Chair, MRS B2B Network

Panelists

Jessica Ashcroft, Customer Insight Officer, Brother International Europe

Liz Montgomery, Director, Sharp Research

Santosh Makhani, Senior Research Director

Amy Middleton, Director, Beam Fieldwork 

Richard Levy, Founder, Sophera Marketing

Jordan Wood, Associate Director, Opinium

16.10 Building a robust, in-house, B2B insight function (on a shoestring)

Micro / SME digital insurance company, Simply Business, has been on a 2-year journey to evolve its Insights team and optimise its impact for stakeholders.

In 2021 Simply Business was like many small client-side Insight functions; a team of one/two, with limited budget, poor in-house capabilities and where enlisting market-leading research agencies on retainers was simply not feasible. This case study will show the journey of how the small team set a new vision, evolved its core insight programmes, aligned the Insight function with the UX and UR functions, and transformed the way it embeds insight to win the respect and trust of stakeholders.

Karin Lombard, Lead - Global Customer and Behavioural Insights Function, Simply Business

16.40 Closing comments from the Chair

16.50 End of conference

17.00 Networking drinks reception

Delegates are invited to continue discussions with industry colleagues at the post conference drinks reception