for W3c validation

Ripple Effect Group is currently completing a research project into digital disruption in the Australian professional services sector.

In the first phase we completed a rapid round of interviews to help determine the scope of this research project. From these interviews we identified three areas to focus on:

1. Working more efficiently and with greater flexibility
2. Client relationship management using social media and social networking
3. Digital knowledge workers

Taking this and also ideas for desirable research outcomes provided by the participants in phase 1, we have now mapped out our research activities for this next phase.

Our main research activities will include:

• Site visits – to find out what a professional services workplace looks like and the work styles it supports (both the good and the bad)
• Roundtables – face-to-face and/or virtual roundtable sessions to discuss the themes ‘working more efficiently and with greater flexibility’, and ‘digital knowledge workers’
• Digital work style survey – asking questions about how people in professional services currently work, how they would prefer to work, and what they think a professional services workplace will look like in the future
• Social media landscape review of client relationship management – looking at how people in professional services are currently using social media to engage with their clients

The site visits, roundtables and survey will provide us with inputs to begin creating a set of personas* to underpin our thinking about digital disruption in professional services.

We are treating the social media landscape review as an exploratory activity and we’re expecting this to provide insights as to the most appropriate additional research activities around this particular focus area.

We also have a set of supplementary research to complete with a range of subject matter specialists and companies who are trying to disrupt professional services or business in general (relevant to our focus areas). We are also going to be contacting people who are clients of professional services firms to begin investigating this other perspective of disruption.

How can you help?

Please complete our short expression of interest survey and indicate:

• Your interest in participating in a site visit
• Your interest and preferences for participating in a roundtable
• Other feedback or comments

If you have any other questions or comments, please get in contact or leave a comment here.

*What are personas?

Personas are user archetypes created to represent a user base. They are a small group of semi-fictional characters created from user research that represent the full extent and natural types of user behaviour. We use personas to help simplify complex user research into a meaningful and usable form that our team and other stakeholders can easily engage with.