Working with our clients, we design Focus Groups to gain a clearer understanding about key issues and opportunities. A focus group is a highly structured meeting that is led by a trained and impartial moderator, the discussion is based on specific issues the client pre-determines and the group has eight to twelve participants. We engage participants in a rigorous process to find out what matters most to your employees, customers or both.  In this setting the participants develop synergy and spontaneity, expanding on each others' ideas, comments and opinions.

Benefits of focus groups include:

	Collection of quantitative data
	Ability to stimulate discussion through examples
	You can gather uniform data across many different groups in multiple locations
	Regular polling of participants generates easily analyzable data and facilitates the  comparisons of information gathered across different groups
	Participation from all people is guaranteed

Brainstorming, which is often a component of focus groups, is a rapid fire generation of ideas from a group of people. This technique is most useful for exploratory data collection, and should be of short duration on a specific topic. For example, a group of customers could be asked why the company receives low scores on satisfaction with customer service.

Benefits of brainstorming include: 

	Ideas are valued and are not criticized
	High energy environment
	A variety of ideas are generated
	Allows for individual discussions
	Completed in a short amount of time

Focus Groups can be done in person or through conference call systems.