This year, Kline has volunteered and entered the Erasmus+ program. The aim of the program is to create synergies between education and business, improve the quality of the teaching/learning processes. Therefore, last month Kline’s Prague office welcomed two teachers of marketing from Spain for direct observation of our business and how various departments work at Kline.
They had many interesting questions about how our products (particularly research reports) arise, get managed, and marketed. With many talks taking place around the office, there were several things about Kline that were reminded to me once again.
The research is an actual product which requires as much patience and creativity to design as any physical product. “Waking up in the morning and having a great idea is one thing, but rare. It is really about the constant search for the next best market idea. For instance, in chemical pharmaceuticals, there is very little innovation. Some innovation is coming from, for example, biologics, and the excipients market for biologicals didn’t exist 10 years ago. Now it is a very small market, but dramatically growing, and people do not know it. We encounter ideas during our researches and, in many ways, it is about communicating these ideas with our clients,” Nikola Matic, Director in Chemicals & Materials practice, described the product design process to the teachers.
It is clear that research business is a challenging business these days as a lot of information is found everywhere. However, it is not always good and meaningful information that one finds everywhere, and it is not always easy to differentiate whether it is quality or unfounded information. While some research companies merely search the Internet and pull this disjointed information together, analysts at Kline, always undertake rigorous research by conducting interviews with industry experts, filling in gaps and making sure that what you are reading has true value.
As a marketer I do not always see how challenging the job of our analysts is. For instance, when over-the-phone interviews, which we must accomplish for all our research topics, are hard or impossible to conduct, particularly for some African or Asian countries, our analysts travel there to observe the market and connect with the local players from lubricants or cosmetics markets alike.
While in consulting side of the business we are not designing the new products, we know how to narrow lengthy lists of business issues clients often bring on the table, to the core of the problem. Then we provide answers based on elaborate research and business expertise, not only mere field and tab service, which although we may use as far assignments require, but never settle for exclusively.
We never stop with “you know what we mean,” which often comes from the client side, but we dig further and ask questions even when the client thinks it is obvious to avoid misunderstanding and lead the project to the right direction.
Mouyad Nashar talking about obstacles in the consulting business.
Marketing our products and services requires a lot of sophisticated tools particularly related to digital marketing, and our team possess all the skills that we could teach. Jose and Nereida mentioned that digital marketing is not the most popular subject among teachers as it requires a lot of continuous learning.
Finally, our analysts are so passionate about what they do. At Kline, all of us, each piece of the chain, understand who our clients are.
Sharbel Luzuriaga explaining “Kline Energy Practice”
