IIeX NA 2019 Conference Series – Manish Mittal – Course5

Happy Market Research Podcast

Welcome to the 2019 IIEX North America Conference Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Manish Mittal, Senior Vice President - Business Head at Course5.

Contact Manish Online:

LinkedIn

Course5

[00:00]

Manish Mittal and I basically grew up together in the market research space. He started a company called Cross-Tab way back when. It’s now been rebranded into Course5. He’s going to talk about the three pillars of Course5 and the evolution and how he has been able and his team has been able to drive successfully year-over-year growth. They’re are now over 1,000 people, continue to make pivots and major changes, and continue to be disruptive and add a lot of value to market research professionals. Enjoy.

[00:32]

So, my guest today is Manish with Course5, course5i.com, if you’re looking for them. Tell me a little bit about your business.

[00:41]

Right, I think we have a slightly diverse kind of a business, if I have to bracket it into three parts of that business. So, one is what we call a market research AI business. I lead that business. Then there is a digital analytics business. And then we have what we call as market intelligence business. Those are the three businesses. We started with a company called Cross-Tab, which was more of a market research operations. Then we also delved into this more of a market intelligence kind of a business by the name Blueocean Market Intelligence. Recently, a year back, we merged the two businesses and we called it Course5i. And the whole idea of naming this as Course5 is the fifth course, which is the future is what we’re trying to help the clients with.

[01:31]

I think that’s really clever. I was checking out your website earlier today. And Cross-Tab, I was actually a fan of back in the early days. You guys started (I might be misremembering) but I want to say it was around like 2004 or 2003, maybe even.

[01:45]

Yeah, I think 2001, 2002 when we started. You’re two off.

[01:50]

Then I remember you guys in the trade show circuits, of course. It was a very interesting value prop. And I think it’s really smart how you have evolved your business to accommodate the changes in the market research space, which a lot of firms don’t actually successfully navigate those pivots. Talk to me about from Cross-Tab to now Course5, where you’re plotting the future. I mean that’s a BIG difference, right? What is one of the big challenges that the company has faced going through that transition?

[02:25]

I think one of the biggest challenges has been about the change itself. We are almost 1,000 people employed in the company. And I think there is a huge amount of inertia. You have been doing a certain way all these years, and now the change you want to bring in. So when we are trying to move in that direction, maybe you want to bring in that digital transformation in any piece of our business and also in the research piece of business. So, the biggest, the hardest of the change are both internal as well as external. The team itself, while they’re excited, but at the same time, there is a question in terms of, “Is it going to be the next thing?”, “Is it the right approach?” And the same with the clients were used to a certain style of dealing with the organization. And they’re feeling that kind of a change. In many cases, they are very welcoming; they’re very excited but, I think, as an industry, the market research industry, if you look at the genesis of this industry, it has been pretty slow in terms of adoption of that kind of a change. I think that’s what we are seeing, but I think we are not losing out. I think we believe that’s the future. And we are hanging on to that, and I think it’s just a matter of time and people will start appreciating and accep...