The New York Times recently published an article based on a Forrester report (Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement) about the uptake of smartphones worldwide in the years to come. And for 2011 it was estimated that just under 500 million smartphones were shipped. Knowing the drivers behind the growth of smartphones gives businesses confidence in mobile technology investment — even when uptake is currently still limited.

In the US today, Consumer Technographics® data shows that mobile usage is still far from mature in many industries. Take the financial industry as an example: 21% of US online adults with a mobile phone do any form of mobile banking versus 73% of US online adults who do online banking. When looking at the different generations, we see that younger generations, who are more likely to be early smartphone adopters, dominate in mobile banking.

How many of you have managed consulting projects that didn’t turn out as planned and left you saying, “If only we had done . . .” ? Have you ever wondered how many steps and criteria are involved in successful consulting projects? And do you know how to avoid project failures?

In an upcoming research report, “Five Stages To Optimize The Research Process,” Forrester will lay out the five key stages, 30-plus key steps, and 130-plus key criteria identified in successful consulting projects. Not all criteria are equal and required for every project, but miss some key criteria and project steps and you could have a project crisis (or expensive failure) on your hands.

Some highlights for each of the key project stages:

• Preparing. We identified 33 key criteria that help MI professionals avoid rushing into the project design without having a clear idea of potential gains and risks, timelines, and threats and how they will prove value-add.
• Designing. Forrester found 36 key criteria to help build successful project designs. Some of the most overlooked were identifying all the stakeholders, their expectations, capabilities, and timing so that deliverables were designed from the start to be stakeholder-aligned.
• Implementing.From finalizing scope to RFPs, final project plans, and kick-offs, Forrester found 27 criteria involved in making sure your project gets off on the right foot. Like creating a deliverable template that matches the goal and making sure that everyone is on the same page with what they need to do by when so that you don’t crash your timelines.

As the newest addition to the Market Insights team, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lindsey Colella, and I recently joined Forrester as a Senior Community Manager.

It is a pleasure to “meet” all of you, and I look forward to many future interactions and discussions regarding market research. My background is in qualitative research and, in particular, cultivating insights through online community management. I take great pleasure in showing clients the value of qualitative and online community research and bringing them to a new level in understanding consumer behavior.

As some of you may know, Forrester runs its own online research community for two purposes — to conduct proprietary research as well as to run custom client research projects, both of which I manage. Our proprietary research is a monthly document called Community Speaks that discusses trends in consumer behavior. This product provides a unique offering because I work closely with expert analysts who provide additional insight around the findings.

As an example, I published a document last month covering how brands should engage consumers via social networking sites. A key finding from this report is that for a brand, earning a “like” is in fact the easy part but keeping that “like” is even harder. The key to maintaining a “like” from consumers is to provide information and promotional offers that relate to their interests. As one of our community members shares:

“I have unliked a lot of brands lately. There are just too many on Facebook to like. I try to limit liking brands that I actually use and interact with often and would benefit from learning more about that brand.”

My colleague Reineke Reitsma and I have been championing mobile market research for quite some time. In fact, we published the first Forrester report on this emerging and innovative methodology back in 2009. In the report, Reineke wrote about the value of its mobility and flexibility to gather insights into consumers’ behavior anytime and anywhere. And for mainstream adoption to occur, hurdles such as cost, technology, privacy, and representation must be addressed.

At that time, I thought the growth of mobile market research was soon upon us. I was off by about 2 years. But 2011 was a turning point for mobile market research. We started 2011 with seeing the number of global shipments of smartphones and tablets surpassing the global shipment of desktop and notebook PCs. Blog posts and Twitter chatter under the #mobilemr hashtag increased significantly. In July 2011 there was the first formal debate about the merits of this new technology. And also in July there was a conference completely dedicated to how early adopters have leveraged mobile market research.