- Published by
- DAI / MSP Activity
Guidance for light-touch, firm-led insight surveys designed to expand understanding about supplier or customer’s preferences and capacities, and enhance the likelihood of a successful partnership.
Light touch, firm-led insight surveys can be a practical entry point for programmes looking to nudge partners to adopt more tailored engagement strategies with smallholders or bottom of the pyramid customer segments. The experience of doing this can also strengthen a firm’s own internal capacities and interest to intentionally learn.
The Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships Aciivty (MSP) requires partner firms to complete a brief customer or supplier insight survey as one of the first performance milestones in the pay-for-performance awards. The purpose of the insight survey is to strengthen the impact and likelihood of the partnership’s success by supporting a firm to capture fresh insights about its supplier or customer base which can influence implementation. MSP has found that for many partners, this is the first time they have ever surveyed their suppliers around these types of questions, and so while the surveys are short and simple – they are still very valuable first steps.
The document contains 4-pages of guidance, written for partners, introducing:
- the purpose of the insight surveys (e.g. these are not big demographic surveys, or an impact-focused survey the firm is doing to help with donor reporting)
- some sample themes for supplier insight surveys and customer insight surveys
- MSP’s expectations of the firm, and at what points the firm can expect to engage with MSP
- some simple considerations on the methodology
- a template for the short Key Findings and Implications report
MSP then ‘walks through’ the content with the partner to ensure key messages are understood.
The annex includes a sample supplier insight survey and methodology, and a sample slide MSP often uses to guide the initial brainstorm with the firm to support them in deciding what their priorities are with this survey and how insights can minimise risks and increase confidence of win-win outcomes.