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John Tullo
Vice President
MasterCard International
United States
Sonali Desai
Director
ACNielsen International Research
United States
Travyn Rhall
Managing Director
ACNielsen International Research
Australia
MasterCard International has a global membership that includes over two thousand financial institutions around the world. To track this far-flung organization's success, all members submit a questionnaire each quarter that summarizes their credit card results. MasterCard uses these quarterly summaries internally to assess performance and externally to prepare press releases and annual reports. So getting high-quality, consistent data is important.
Yet MasterCard was dissatisfied with the completeness and correctness of their data. They also noted that members were not embracing a new quarterly reporting tool that MasterCard had implemented, a fact that was also affecting report quality.
They realized any factors could be at work: language issues, lack of training, different business models and more. So
how might they untangle a concern that had so many possible facets, stretching across thousands of different financial institutions around the globe? On the one hand, it made sense to engage a traditional consulting firm. On the other, a market research company could also provide information-based consulting.
ACNielsen International Research, working with MasterCard, developed a synergistic approach that
combined the strengths of both companies. In so doing, MasterCard ended up with a holistic solution that resolved present-day reporting concerns and elevated the process to a new level.
Building a Blended Approach
ACNielsen began by defining the core questions the study would address, namely:
- How trustworthy are the data in the quarterly reports from members?
- Where are the quality gaps in the reports? How can these gaps be filled?
- What needs and requirements do members have as
they use the reporting tools?
- What are the likes, dislikes and areas of improvement for the current reporting tool and the current reporting process?
- Why haven't members embraced the new
reporting tool?
To tackle these questions, we borrowed a construct from the information based consulting world—disaggregate component mapping—to whittle down each core question into its individual parts, such as process, systems, skills, and so on. Then we looked at the array of skills available across both market research and consulting disciplines to pick the methodology that seemed to apply. In some cases, such as qualitative interviewing of members, a market research approach was the clear choice. When it came to auditing data integrity, traditional consulting practices made more sense. In still other areas, such as industry benchmarking, an approach that blended market research and consulting offered the best solution.
We then needed to decide which members to interview. In this, we followed our traditional marketing research rules for building a representative sample. We identified member institutions that contributed high, medium and low levels of volume and chose interviewees from each level. At the same time, we looked for organizations that would represent each of MasterCard's key geographies. This sort ultimately yielded 15 financial institutions located in eight different countries as best candidates for in-depth interviews—a group that represents 25% of MasterCard global volume.
Collaboration at a New Level
With the structure of the study established, we were nearly ready to begin the field interviews.
We realized, though, that this effort would benefit
from close collaboration between client and consultant. Collaboration became a theme—as well as a
methodology—for the entire project.
In that spirit, ACNielsen spent nearly five days at MasterCard International corporate offices interviewing employees about the reporting cycle before heading out to the field. In this intensive training phase, we learned exactly how the reporting system was administered to members from start to end. We learned what each of the numbers and terms in the report meant, how they were constructed and the inter-relationships between different line items. Then we studied where each number came from in the financial institution's transaction and card information database.
Once we'd built this intellectual foundation, we constructed an interview guide to direct our data-gathering about members' likes, dislikes, reporting needs and suggestions for improving the current reporting tool. We went through a comparable process with the MasterCard employees who own the new reporting tool—again, in order to understand its capabilities and mechanics and analyze why more
members weren't using it as intended.
As a result, we gained a deep understanding of MasterCard's existing processes and developed a close working partnership with this client. Coupled with our own knowledge of the payment card industry and market research expertise, this step prepared us well for
gathering data.
The Good, The Bad and the Incomplete
To set a friendly, positive context for face-to-face interviews with MasterCard employees who complete the quarterly questionnaire, each member was sent a letter in advance explaining that his or her institution had been chosen for study as part of a “best practices” documentation. And in fact, after the project was completed, a best practices
document was developed for and distributed to the
member banks.
ACNielsen completed the interviews over a period of two months; each interview lasted between two-and-a-half and six hours. These sessions generated a wealth of quality information about MasterCard's quarterly reporting
issues. Study results showed that:
- Data integrity at the primary level was high.
- Data integrity at the secondary level was lower.
- Gaps in reporting quality at the secondary level were due to differences in interpretation and definitions, missing data and estimations.
- On the process side, members were basically following sound processes and using good systems.
- In the area of skills and content, most people responsible for completing the reports had the necessary skills but a number lacked adequate training to do a good job.
- Slow adoption of the new reporting tool was due to format and training issues rather than the tool itself. In fact, members tended to prefer the new tool over the prior system once they were comfortable with it.
- Industry benchmarking revealed that some competitors used checks and balances to refine data quality in the reporting process—a step MasterCard International was willing to refine and adopt to their situation.
These conclusions, and the associated root causes, were exactly what MasterCard International's senior management sought. ACNielsen made a series of strategic- and tactical-level recommendations to improve MasterCard's data-gathering process. At the same time, the broader review we provided by benchmarking best practices across the payment card industry gave MasterCard a useful competitive assessment. The success of this project resulted in two additional projects on which MasterCard International and ACNielsen International Research also collaborated effectively.
A “Window” of Opportunity
The success of this project could not have been accomplished with separate initiatives and methods. Drawing upon the strengths of traditional marketing research and traditional consulting disciplines in a non-traditional way created a more nuanced, comprehensive outcome that led to sounder decision-making.
To replicate the success of this project in future client-supplier relationships, we see a model in “Johari's Window,” an old but elegant concept explaining interpersonal relationships and communications [See chart 1].
Johari's Window divides perception into four quadrants: open, hidden, blind and unknown. There are things readily apparent to others and ourselves (open); things we perceive but others don't (hidden); things that others perceive but we don't (blind spot); and finally areas where neither we nor others see clearly (unknown). The goal in interpersonal relationships is to increase the area of the open quadrant
to enhance stronger relationships and communications
[See chart 2].
Here we have modified Johari's Window to illustrate
optimum client-supplier relationships. Instead of “self” and “others,” the two axes of relationship are
- Client's ability to share information on their business/industry, an
- Supplier's ability to build knowledge based on information provided by the client.
In this modified Johari's Window, greater ability on the client's part (to share information) and on the supplier's part (to build knowledge) minimizes blind spots and areas of the unknown. Our experience of this win-win environment came first from the highly collaborative tone set on this project. Then, by blending practices and skill sets from different disciplines, we experienced an enhanced ability to build knowledge that contributed significantly to our client's satisfaction and overall success.
To borrow from our client: Yes, maybe some of the best projects in business have clear skill boundaries. But for everything else, there's creative collaboration.
This article is an excerpted version of the paper presented at the 57th ESOMAR Congress and Exhibition, Lisbon, Portugal, September 19–22, 2004.
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