Fiona’s…Fascinations | Make your business count!

The importance of measurement for diverse businesses

Fiona’s Fascinations is a regular column by Fiona Blades, Founder of MESH Experience.  In this column, Fiona will explore new thinking on how market research can help marketing and brand growth.

When I moved to the US I had, what I now consider to be a particularly British attitude towards diversity.  I would characterize this as believing that equality was important and that women should be encouraged but that there should be no positive discrimination for women (or minorities). In other words, if the woman was not deemed to be as good as the man, she should not get the gig.

My views have changed!

If men always got the job, there would be no diversity on the board. And this would be a problem for the company.  Boston Consulting Group found that increasing the diversity of leadership teams leads to more and better innovation and improved financial performance.

Embracing the cultural opportunities afforded by the US, I realised that it would be beneficial to MESH Experience to become certified as a women-owned business. In the US there is a Billion Dollar Roundtable, which corporates, like Bank of America, enter, when they demonstrate that they are putting $1 billion or more through diverse suppliers.  Corporates understand that there are benefits, beyond doing the right thing, to helping diverse suppliers. Smaller, diverse businesses provide innovation, agility and a fresh perspective.

Yes!! We all know that there can be problems with targets. They can lead to the wrong decisions. Maybe there is an inherent prestige in having your company in the $ Billion Club? But at the same time what gets measured gets valued.

Now, an evangelist for diverse supply, I attended a meeting in London for WBEs (Women Business Enterprises) and corporate clients. I realised that MESH already worked with corporates sponsoring WEConnect, the body through whom the company is certified. But, I had not been asked for our certificate. There was a panel with four corporates and about one hundred WBEs in the room. I decided to tackle the measurement question head on (after all MESH measures experiences, measurement is what our industry is about!). I said that we worked with one of the corporates on the panel but I didn’t think they knew this. What measurement did the panellists have in place?

There was appropriate seat shuffling. It was clear that none measured the revenue through diverse suppliers. Some came clean. The representative from the company we worked with looked around the room – I think he was trying to assess the size of businesses we had – and he said that his company only monitored suppliers with revenue over £100,000. What did he think? That we were selling him pencils? Our contract was for around £750,000 pa.

Back to the US…

Last year we were lucky enough to secure a contract with a major corporate, a member of the Billion Dollar Roundtable. This corporate, quite rightly, asked how much revenue we were putting through diverse businesses.  Hmmm. I realised that we should be measuring this. How could I be challenging corporates, if we weren’t measuring our own expenditure with diverse businesses? There were some diverse businesses we worked with, introduced through WEConnect – The Female Social Network, founded by Fi Bendall and Forensic Pathways (monitoring the dark web) founded by Deb Leary. However, within the research arena our performance was not great. So I tried to look on the industry body directories to see if I could find diverse businesses (certified women-owned, ethnic minority owned, others for disability, veteran, LGBTQ, small). I couldn’t search for them.

At this point I went back to our new corporate client to explain that the volume we were putting through certified diverse businesses was small. However, what I could offer to do was to lobby to get our industry bodies to create search terms in their directories so that I could easily find diverse businesses to support. I am delighted to say that ESOMAR, the MRS, GreenBook and WIRe have all offered to help. What fantastic industry bodies we have and how amazing that the leaders of these bodies immediately offered support!

As an industry, I believe we embrace diversity. And it is important that we are open to diverse perspectives to help our clients understand different audiences. 

Whenever I can, I encourage businesses that I know to be diverse to certify. In fact, Jigsaw Research Limited, one of these businesses, was the Research Agency of the Year for 2019 in London. Most of us probably didn’t know that Jigsaw was a women-owned business. How wonderful that a diverse business took the top accolade last year.

This is my ask of you.

• If you are a diverse business that is at least 51% owned, as well as managed and controlled by one or more women, that you get certified by WEConnect International. If you are a diverse business through other criteria that you get in touch with your relevant certification body.
• If you are a corporate client and are not already supporting WEConnect, that you get in touch with Maggie Berry to benefit from this association.
• Whether client or agency, diverse or not, that you start to measure the amount of business you put through diverse suppliers.

We have a role to lead the agenda in measuring diverse suppliers and we already have diverse businesses winning awards for business performance.

Let’s embrace this together for our industry.