It was an exciting summer for the team at MMC Research with one of the busiest periods they've experienced since establishing the business in 2015.
Across the last few months, they have been working with organisations across the North East to understand what matters to the people and businesses they serve, from business confidence and economic growth to transport, communities and the future of the region.
One of their newest projects is the Tees Valley Business Confidence Barometer, working with law firm Ward Hadaway on its inaugural survey. The Barometer will provide valuable insight into how businesses across Tees Valley are performing, how confident they feel about the future and the opportunities and challenges they are facing. It will also explore the factors businesses believe will shape the region’s economy in the years ahead.
For MMC, this is an important piece of research. By giving businesses an opportunity to share their experiences and expectations, the research will help identify emerging trends and provide a valuable evidence base for conversations around the Tees Valley region’s economic future.
The team has also been working with the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority on its bus franchising project, supporting consultation activity that gives people across the North East an opportunity to have their say. The work has involved some qualitative focus groups with those seldom heard.
Closer to home, they have also started working with Sunderland City Council on its Pride in Place programme, supporting engagement designed to ensure residents have a genuine opportunity to help shape investment in their communities.
Sunderland’s Pride in Place programme includes significant long-term investment, with £20m allocated to each of the two Phase 2 areas. The programme places residents at the heart of decisions about how their communities should develop.
These projects may look very different on the surface but they all demonstrate why good market research matters.
Whether you are a business trying to understand your customers, a regional body developing transport policy or a local authority planning investment in communities, assumptions aren’t enough, you need to understand what people actually think.
For MMC Founder and Managing Director Natasha McDonough, this is at the heart of the work the team undertakes. “The most valuable research doesn’t simply give you a set of numbers or a collection of opinions. It gives you an understanding of what those findings mean and importantly, what you can do with them. Our role is to make sure people have a genuine opportunity to be heard and then turn those views into insight that can support better decisions.”
That focus on listening and giving businesses and communities a voice is particularly relevant for Natasha as she begins her new role as President of the North East England Chamber of Commerce, following the announcement last month.
It is a role that builds on her long-standing commitment to ensuring businesses across the North East have a strong voice and one that sits naturally alongside her work at MMC.
For the team, the summer has reinforced something they regularly see, the North East is changing, growing and facing significant opportunities. As those changes continue, there has never been a greater need to understand the people and organisations at the heart of them.
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