Penalva Research

ResearchOps — our specialty

Scale research across your organization.

One great study changes a decision. An operating system for research changes how the whole company decides. ResearchOps is the people, processes, and tools that make research fast, compliant, and reusable — at enterprise scale.

3+ weeks

typical recruiting time per study without a participant panel — the silent killer of research velocity.

~70%

of enterprise research findings are never reused: they live in slide decks nobody can search.

11 templates

standardized study scenarios we built on one engagement — enabling 33 experiments with 3,360 users in a single year.

The framework

Six pillars of a research operation

Based on the industry-standard ResearchOps framework (as codified by Nielsen Norman Group) — each pillar framed by what it does for the business.

01

Participant Management

Recruiting pipelines, panels, screeners, incentives, and scheduling — the logistics that consume up to a third of every study.

Recruiting is the #1 bottleneck in research speed. A managed panel turns 3-week recruiting cycles into 3-day ones.

02

Governance, Consent & Legal

Consent flows, data privacy compliance (GDPR/LGPD/CCPA), NDAs, and secure handling of participant data.

One privacy incident costs more than a decade of research budgets. Governance makes research safe to scale across the enterprise.

03

Tools & Infrastructure

Selection, procurement, and configuration of the research stack — UserZoom, Dovetail, Miro, analytics — integrated with your existing workflow.

The right stack cuts per-study cost and turnaround. Standardized templates enabled 33 experiments with 3,360 users in one year on a single engagement.

04

Knowledge Management

Research repositories and atomic research systems that make every insight searchable, citable, and reusable across teams.

Stop paying to re-learn what you already know. Institutional memory means every new study builds on the last instead of starting from zero.

05

Competency & Enablement

Playbooks, templates, and training that let PMs and designers run sound lightweight research — with quality guardrails.

Democratization done right multiplies research capacity without multiplying headcount — or the risk of bad DIY studies driving bad decisions.

06

Advocacy & Socialization

Insight communication systems — readouts, digests, dashboards — that put evidence in front of decision-makers at the right moment.

Research only pays off when it changes decisions. Socialization is the difference between a repository and shelf-ware.

How to engage

Three ways to build your research operation

ResearchOps Audit

A maturity assessment of your current research practice across all six pillars, with a prioritized roadmap to scale.

2–3 weeks

Repository & Ops Setup

Hands-on implementation: repository architecture, templates, participant panel, governance, and team training.

4–8 weeks

Ops-as-a-Service Retainer

Ongoing fractional ResearchOps leadership — running the operation while your team focuses on insights.

Monthly retainer

Turn research into a company capability.

Start with a ResearchOps audit — two to three weeks to a clear maturity picture and a prioritized roadmap.