future of work

Year: 2022
Role: Enterprise Growth Research Lead
Research Method: In-depth interviews
Research Type: Exploratory Research, Relationship Mapping
Company: Miro

Due to the sensitive nature of some of my work, the detailed case study is available by request only. If you’re interested in checking it out, please drop me a quick line here or through LinkedIn for the password.

In the meantime, below is a high-level outline of the goals of the project, methods used, learnings and outcomes. 

background and goals

After the work-from-home mandates were subsiding, we anticipated a transformation to a hybrid workplace and felt that our most strategic option would be to focus on players within the 'future of work' and 'hybrid consulting' space. 

Miro's go-to-market organization had the ambitious goal of expanding enterprise accounts through raising awareness among senior leaders of the value Miro brings to their organizations. Rather than center on the 'bottoms-up' organic growth (product-led, low-influence, high-usage), we determined that we should focus on a 'middle-out' approach: middle management with high influence within buying decisions. 

Research Learning Goals

• Understand the responsibilities of the players within the 'future of work' and 'hybrid consulting' funcitonal families. Primarily in how they make software buying decisions.
• Uncover their official agendas and hidden agendas.
• Map the buying / provisioning journey when it comes to tooling. Understand what is essential, what is convenient, and hwere Miro fits.
• Map the critical relationships and the ecosystem / points of influence.
• Develop messaging that resonates with them and validate our current value proposition.

Business Goals

• Identify areas of product market fit and the addressable audience.
• Deliver on messaging that speaks to their desired outcomes, understand integration and multi-audience marketing opportunities.
• Define and map competitors so we understand areas for displacement.
• Build a messaging map as a guideline for internal teams addressing key players.
• Inform direct channel marketing tactics including lifecycle and nurture flows.

method

We conducted the research in three different phases over the course of two months:

• Phase 1: uncovering tribal knowledge from our internal consulting and enterprise IT subject matter experts. Gain buy-in with enterprise growth and product marketing teams. Align on delivery of outcomes and run a hypothesis building workshop.
• Phase 2: fieldwork interviews, 90-minute sessions with 9 participants per functional family (18 total). Analyze and synthesize inputs.
• Phase 3: present persona buyer cards, ecosystem maps, and buying & provisioning journeys to stakeholder teams and leadership. Run messaging workshop to deliver on enterprise marketing needs.

crucial insights

• For each 'functional family' we developed several buyer persona cards that helped us uncover the organizational structure, level of influence and seniority, mindsets and emotions, digital maturity, and tooling ecosystem.
• We also created ecosytem maps that helped us understand the level of influence our target personas have within their enterprise tooling decision-making process. Neither the 'future of work' or 'hybrid consulting' personas are responsible for making decisions, but future of work have a much higher sway in the conversation.
• Finally, we outlined the tooling purchase journey for each functional family to communicate to our sales and marketing teams where exactly Miro could make the most waves.

The full case study can be found here. Please contact me for access to the case study and for additional findings and learnings.

research impact

Strategic Impact​

• This project had a huge impact on the strategic direction of our enterprise go-to-market teams. Since this project, we have completely overhauled elevator pitch, value propositions, and pitch decks aimed at these audiences.
• Our sales team in particular has transformed the way they target buyers and at what point in the purchasing journey. This has led to a 12% increase in sales and expansion rates.

Stakeholder collaboration Impact

• This research study was interesting as we were intentionally bringing two separate research studies into one. The projects had already kicked off in their individual siloed spaces by the time we were looped in, and we were able to align teams effectively.
• The stakeholders were unique as they were spread across new verticals within our developing enterprise go-to-market org. This project was a first pilot of a collaboration that proved to work over the course of the year.

Product Impact 

• Since this project, we have onboarded an entire UX Research team to serve the enterprise org. They continue to leverage insights from this project as they develop tooling solutions for Miro admins and enterprise IT roles.

my learnings

• Trust my gut — when I notice that multiple teams are asking for the same thing and running as if they are putting out fires, offering them a chance to take a breath and align behind a common goal proved very successful.
• Getting clarity around deliverables was key here and allowed this project to make direct impact in the short and long-term.
• There is such a thing as too many voices in the room! I had to remove several stakeholders when I realized they were not benefiting the end-goals of the project and would serve better as end-users of the final outcomes.