Case Studies

The following are a representative sample of recent client engagements successfully completed by Daniel Research Group. These Case Studies span both the breadth of methodologies and the depth of the technologies and markets that define the services we offer.

Technical Computing – International Research

A leading vendor in the Technical Computing Workstation market needed to gain a better understanding of its end-user requirements in Europe in order to develop its next generation of hardware and software products. Daniel Research Group advised that focus groups were the best methodology to use based on the nature of the specific research issues and the density of the qualified end-user population.

Solving numerous problems related to the various languages, local custom and logistics inherent in this type of research, Daniel Research Group was able to successfully design, recruit, execute and analyze a series of focus groups held in London, Paris, Munich and Milan. The client used the results of this research to customize its core product and service offerings to meet the specific and unique requirements of its European customers.

System Level Software – Market Share

One of the world’s largest systems vendors was close to announcing its entry into an emerging market with a significant systems level software product. The vendor was faced with a range of product and marketing decisions and sought help in understanding how best to craft its offering in order to maximize market share.

Daniel Research Group designed and executed focus groups among enterprise user, IT executives who were potential customers for the product. In addition, Daniel Research Group utilized its ShareSolver Market Model Methodology to create a market share model and forecast of this market. The results of this research allowed the vendor to craft its offering, marshal its resources and ultimately reach its market share objective.

Embedded Developer Requirements – Find the Family Jewels

The client was a software developer that had developed a software automations tool. Among the markets that the client targeted was the Embedded Systems market. The client, in order to guide and influence its research and development efforts, needed to gain a better understanding of developer requirements.

The research challenge presented to Daniel Research Group was how to identify, reach and gain the cooperation of the developers. The target companies were engaged in developing embedded systems and considered these developers major assets that were vulnerable to recruiting by competitors, in addition to having access to critical intellectual property. The hurdles and challenges that these companies erected to protect these developers were formidable.

Daniel Research Group was able to build a staff of extremely experienced executive and technical recruiters whose collaborative efforts were able to craft strategy and tactics that were successful in breaching these barriers and gained the cooperation of these developers. The in-depth interview research was successfully completed.

Automotive Industry Technical Computing – The View from the Top - a Multi-Client Study

The research objective was to identify and define the long term research & development and manufacturing computing requirement of the major automotive manufactures and key suppliers. The scope of the research required participation of the most senior technical computing executives at major automotive companies.

Daniel Research Group was able to recruit these executives (CIOs and CTOs) from the Big Three Detroit companies, three major Japanese automotive companies and major USA automotive industry suppliers to participate in a panel discussion focus group in the Detroit area. In addition, Daniel Research Group created the discussion guide by re-casting the research requirement of the sponsoring technical clients into the context and vocabulary of the automotive research participants.

The sponsoring technology vendors used the results of this research to make and influence major research & development investment decisions for hardware, software and services offerings for the automotive industry.

Reinventing the Company – A Second Life

The client was a company whose primary product was nearing the end of its product life. The client had benefited from several years of success but was concerned about what it correctly perceived as coming disruptive changes to its market. It wished to find new opportunities by leveraging its viable core competencies and, if necessary, by acquiring additional strategic assets.

Daniel Research Group applied its comprehensive Market Opportunity and Requirements Evaluation M.O.R.E. methodology to design and execute a series of research projects to address the client’s research objectives. These projects included surveys, telephone and on-site interviews and focus groups among enterprise end-users, primarily IT Senior Executives, in various industries. In addition, experts in various technology and markets were brought in to add expertise and analysis to the research findings. The research was successfully in identifying several market opportunities that meet the three criteria of the M.O.R.E. methodology

• There exists a real, identifiable and exploitable market need.
• The Company has the tangible and intangible assets to meet that need.
• The Company is capable of successful attaining its target market share against existing competition.

Subsequently the client executed a series of successful acquisitions and divestitures and is a market leader in the targeted markets today.

Major Telecommunications Vendors – Convergence and Unified Communications

Daniel Research Group has designed and executed several research projects for Major Telecommunications vendors whose research objectives are to guide their long-term research and development plans into profitable market opportunities. These projects utilized large numbers of focus groups among various enterprise and consumers constituencies to gain a deep and meaningful understanding of both the current buying process and envisioned future needs.

Daniel Research Group managed the entire field operations including:

• Sourcing facilities and recruiters
• Managing recruitment
• Moderating the focus groups.

Instrumental in the success of these projects was the utilization of Daniel Research Group’s Focus/IT Enterprise Buying Model and its Consumer Life Cycle Segmentation Model in the design of the research and the crafting of the moderator guides. The research has been successful in influencing these vendors’ product and service development decisions consequently allowing them to maximize market opportunities.

Global Market Forecasts – Methodology, Process and Tools

For 21 years Daniel Research Group was the primary consultant to IDC in the area of large scale custom market models and forecasts. Over the time Daniel Research Group designed, developed and implemented over 100 large forecast market model. Each individual forecast model was based on the particular clients’ internal product/service taxonomy as well as their Geographic, Vertical, Customer Size, and Customer Segment taxonomies. The models were highly complex, often non-intuitive and recursive.

Daniel Research Group developed solutions for many complex common problems involving taxonomy transformation, modeling missing data points, segmentation and validation. The success of these projects was significantly depending on tools and process utilizing Daniel Research Group GrowthSolver, SegmentSolver, MatrixSolver, ShareSolver and InstalledBaseSolver modeling methodologies as well as project specific methods and processes that mapped the various IDC hardware, software and services data sets into the clients' proprietary taxonomies.

In addition to the core models, Daniel Research Group’s major contribution to these projects is the overall design and construction of tools and process for analysts use, harvesting and aggregation of data and quality assurance. The success of these projects have depended heavily upon not only mathematical and methodology knowledge but additionally upon the depth and breadth of Daniel Research Group’s comprehensive understanding of the technologies and global markets.

Over the last five years, Daniel Research Group has designed, implemented and executed global market model forecasts for the following vendors:

Vendor	Global Market Model
ATT EDS IBM IBM Lexmark Microsoft Microsoft SAP Verizon	Telecommunications Services Printers Services Printers PC Systems Software Software Telecommunications

Collaborative Consulting - Quantifying Analysts Qualitative Assessments

Acacia Research Group is a technology market research firm that covers the entertainment technology industry, needed to updated its Visualization, Simulation & Training report. Daniel Research Group and Acacia collaborated to build a new market model and forecast that leveraged Acacia’s existing model as well as expanding its scope through the use of Daniel Research Group SegmentSolver and MatrixSolver methodologies. The success of the collaboration was primarily due to the ability of Acacia to express its qualitative assessments in quantitative terms thought an intuitive interface.

Top-Down and Bottom-Up Calibration

A major technology market research from covering the storage industry engaged Daniel Research Group to build a market model predicting the migration from Scale-Up architecture to Scale-Out storage architecture in the Enterprise market. This engagement requires the construction of two independent models.

The Top-Down model coupled an adoption penetration model with our InstalledBaseSolver to predict the installed and shipped terabytes, and then applied a market wide pricing model to predict total market revenues. The Bottom-Up model was based on secondary research conducted by Daniel Research Group to compile revenue and pricing data from all of the public vendors participating in the market. The client provided similar data for the non-public vendors. The final forecast was produced by adjusting the parameters of the Top-Down model to calibrate the output with the Bottom-Up results for several key management metrics.

Incorporating the Client Model

Blumberg Advisory Group, Inc. is a Research & Consulting firm that covers the Reverse Logistics & Aftermarket Service markets. Blumberg engaged Daniel Research Group to design and develop models of the Reverse Logistics market for Set Top Boxes and Cell Phones in the United States, Canada and Brazil. The models consisted of three primary component.

Subscriber penetration models were first constructed based on baseline and penetration data obtained through secondary research. The second component utilized our InstalledBaseSolver to create total shipments (including replacements), retirements/refurbishments, and in-use installed base units and values. The third component incorporated Blumberg’s own proprietary Reverse Logistic Model into to the overall model. The final output was produced by adjusting parameters in the Installed Base and Reverse Logistics components to yield values for key management metrics.