With growing pressure on market researchers to deliver insights faster, KS&R found themselves under strain amid shorter timelines, tighter deadlines and rising expectations. Mary Curry, Director at KS&R explained that with E Tabs automation solutions, they quickly turned the tide, transforming their reporting process and enabling the delivery of high quality insights at speed.
Who are KS&R?
KS&R are a leading market research firm who have operated for over 40 years. “We pride ourselves on delivering consistent, high-quality results for our clients with excellence.“ With a broad global reach, they conduct research across a wide range of countries and industries. These range from quick-service restaurants and transportation to logistics and healthcare.
KS&R’s healthcare team primarily works with leading medical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, as well as human and animal health treatment centres. “We work with some of the leading manufacturers. You probably all know their names…” While much of their work involves bespoke solutions tailored to key business questions, they’re also well known for designing and executing robust KPI trackers and ATUs that help drive their clients’ businesses forward.
The KS&R Struggle
The bar of excellence KS&R set for themselves was high. They needed a way to meet their goals without overextending their team. They were looking for a reporting solution that would free up more time for strategic thinking. This meant spending less time manually populating and proofing reports and more time engaging with the data to uncover the insights that were truly driving business decisions.
“We needed a solution that would allow us more time for thinking so we could actually get into the data, get our hands dirty with it and see what was driving the business.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
KS&R’s team faced the added challenge of balancing tight quotas with limited data collection windows. “We have a challenging audience to reach when we’re talking about health care professionals, especially those that are specialists like cardiologists or oncologists.” Much of their time was spent manually building the reports which left a minimal capacity for deep thinking. As a result, the report outputs sometimes felt flat. They found themselves asking, “If the report isn’t offering anything new, what is the value in all the effort?”
Mary Curry explained, their data collection period lasted ten days, “Which left only five days to produce a complex report spanning sixty pages. This in turn gave their clients just a few days to digest the findings before presenting them internally.” The timeline was intense and unsustainable. “We consistently had staff members during reporting week working until ten or eleven o’clock at night, about five or six hours a day of overtime, not just an hour or two.”
“We needed to really make a difference for our team so that they could start delivering the work that we knew that they could deliver.” KS&R’S team felt a culture of pressure and burnout. It was clear this model had to change. Mary explained that this mentality was not something she wanted to see continuing.
“We had team members stressing out if they were sick during reporting week or if they were to take time off. They felt guilty about leaving their teammates behind in the trenches.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Additionally, the clients wanted their monthly reports to feel dynamic and insightful, not stale. KS&R’s goal was to elevate their trackers into agile tools that reflected the excellence they are known for. This meant helping the team go beyond manual reporting. KS&R began exploring solutions to improve both the quality of the reporting and well-being of their team.
“We had to focus on improvement, so I went out looking for a solution.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Reporting Reimagined with E-Tabs
Mary explained that, after trying several tools that failed to deliver the necessary speed and ease, KS&R discovered E-Tabs at a booth at The Quirk’s Conference in Chicago! It became the turning point in allowing KS&R to elevate insight delivery and most importantly, restore the balance for their team.
“We went with E-Tabs Enterprise Solution. It’s the tool that really helped save our team’s life.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Partnering with E-Tabs Bureau
KS&R chose to leverage the in-house expertise of E-Tabs rather than having someone on their team learn the system from scratch under tight time constraints. “We just annotated our slides and sent them off to E-Tabs for the initial setup.” Once the foundation was in place, KS&R invested in a license that gave them full autonomy. They could refresh data as needed, stay on their own timelines and make slide adjustments themselves.
“If we need to change a chart from twelve months to eighteen months, it’s a quick adjustment. No big deal. It takes minutes and then we are on our way.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Reaping the Benefits of E-Tabs Enterprise
KS&R saw immediate value in E-Tabs’ Enterprise solution for several reasons. Most notably, it was built directly within PowerPoint, allowing them to maintain their existing workflows without disruption. “There is no extra work needed to make the file usable – it just drops straight into our report.” This meant the team could easily manipulate charts and tables, with no additional formatting required.
Automation played a major role in enhancing efficiency. “No more ‘oops, we forgot to change the month from August to September.” That is all automated now. “If there is a mistake, it is a quick and easy fix.” Perhaps just as important was the smooth implementation.
“All the base sizes are automated. Costs can be automated. Chart sizes automated. Everything.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
The system aligned perfectly with KS&R’s established banner books and reporting templates. “We did not have to change the way we work. It fits perfectly with our existing banner books and reporting standards, so our team did not face any additional workload when we implemented it. Additionally, our error rate went way, way down.”
Banner Book Benefits That Went Beyond
KS&R found that the automation offered flexibility beyond what their existing banner books could provide. They were able to incorporate additional calculations and statistical significance testing that previously had to be done manually.
This capability extended the value of their reporting by enabling them to replicate outputs across regions and countries whenever needed. Recently, they even applied automation to break down results by segment, making it easier to spot trends without digging through the banner book. “I can just look at the charts and be like, oh, this segment is trending like this. It is an easy call out for me to write.”
“We used to have to do all of that by hand. Now it’s automated. So huge, huge relief for us.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
KS&R Incorporating Enterprise:
KS&R has now taken full ownership of their automation, applying it to more projects as their team grows in confidence and capability. With the continued support of E-Tabs experts, they adopted a hybrid approach that allowed them to quickly lift the reporting burden off their analysts while building long-term autonomy. One of their analysts now owns the platform internally, understands its full potential, and champions its use, particularly for prioritising repeatable work.
Their tracker projects, for instance, include a consistent set of core questions each month. As client needs evolve, new questions are added and removed, but KS&R focuses on automating the fixed elements. “Because more than half of our report is automated, we’ve cut down quite a lot of time,” they shared. Temporary content is still handled manually if needed, but time-savings are incredible.
“With most of the work covered, the time savings are substantial.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
The team also built a culture of advocacy, encouraging staff to actively look for automation opportunities across KS&R. “Find the right person in your company who wants to learn more, who wants to feel elevated, and who can champion the platform. Then train the entire team to spot where automation makes sense.” This mindset helped them expand usage beyond a single team.
Results That Speak
Report turnaround no longer requires overtime. “We now close data collection Monday morning and deliver the report Friday afternoon.” The time saved is reinvested in analysis. “That gives me two full days to figure out the trends, figure out what’s actually going on, and answer a lot of the whys before I pass it off to my client.”
Mary elaborated that, beyond efficiency, the impact has extended to client satisfaction and commercial growth. A tracker once considered stale has since been expanded. New work-streams have opened and the wider company has taken notice. She added, “I used to be on a tracker that took two weeks to populate and proof, only leaving me a day to figure out what was going on… Not really an ideal situation! Now, it’s down drastically.”
One colleague at KS&R applied automation to a business services client project that required segment-level reporting across over forty different audiences. These included groups like Gen Z, pet owners, and new homeowners. Doing this manually would have been incredibly time-consuming. Automation made it feasible. “Of course, if they were doing that by hand, you can imagine how long that would take.” On top of this, other teams across KS&R are now using E-Tabs automation. A veterinary and pet owner tracker, which previously required two weeks to populate and proof, now delivers a 140-slide deck every quarter with time to spare for analysis.
“Before, we had four people working four days on reports and sixteen-man days; a lot of overtime. We’re down to three and no expected overtime during reporting week.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Automation in Action Across Teams
The impact of automation at KS&R has extended well beyond a single project or team. With more time available to engage with the data, analysts are now spending full weeks digging into insights and uncovering deeper trends. This has transformed their ability to deliver more meaningful and impactful analysis to clients.
“The team are able to spend a full week digging into the data and what’s going on to really provide a more impactful understanding of what is happening with the data.“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Team Collaboration, Delivering More Than Just Numbers.
The internal value of automation is also evident. Richard, a key analyst who now owns the automation platform on his team, has been temporarily loaned to support another team working with a quick service restaurant client. That project involves thirty separate initiatives across numerous countries—all with tight deadlines. Thanks to automation, the team is now equipped to meet those demands efficiently, without burning out. Richard is working only the overtime he chooses, not what is mandated! This transformation matters because it has shifted KS&R’s role from simply delivering data to providing strategic value.
“We’re actually delivering insights that will help drive our clients’ businesses forward, not just saying ‘here are the numbers.’“
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Wellbeing Transformed
The improved workflow has significantly enhanced the team wellbeing. Susan, a long-time team member felt the strain of years of heavy workflows. Thanks to automation, she is now seeing tangible improvements! Mary explained that they were worried about her. “She’s been on the team the longest and has felt the brunt of most of the overwork that had been happening.” Now herself and the wider team are thriving; they not only have a revolutionized work-life balance but are able to go above and beyond with the data due to speedy reporting with E-Tabs Enterprise.
“One of my analysts who I have been desperately trying to figure out how to get her to smile, actually smiled on a call yesterday, she told me she finally feels okay.”
Mary Curry
Director, KS&R
Strategic Additions and Deeper Client Value
KS&R is now able to offer additional layers of insight. In one case, the team conducted complimentary secondary research for a cardiology client, exploring related categories to identify future trends. “We were able to do that because we now had the time to do it.” That extra capacity is being channelled into providing broader context and strategic guidance that would not have been possible before.
“We’re not looking to reduce our workforce. What it allows us to do is to gain the capacity to actually add strategic value to the work we’re doing.”
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