How Quadrant Strategies Cut Research Turnaround and Cost in Half Using AI Moderation

“AI is really helping to fulfill the promise of being strategists, not order takers.” 

— Afshin Mohamadi, Partner, Quadrant Strategies 

From the IIEX North America session, AI Adoption is Table Stakes. ResTech ROI is the Real Standard. Washington D.C., April 2026 

Watch the full session here.

Quadrant Strategies is a full-service market research firm specializing in brand positioning and corporate reputation for high-stakes, hard-to-reach audiences, including the technology companies building the AI the rest of the industry runs on. Since adopting Discuss, Quadrant has cut research turnaround in half, cut cost per project in half, and built a new weekly intelligence product that didn’t exist before. This is the case study behind those numbers.

TL;DR

• Quadrant cut research project turnaround and cost per project in half after adopting Discuss
• AI moderation handles routine data collection at scale, freeing researchers to focus on strategic analysis and client counsel
• DC Navigator, Quadrant’s proprietary weekly intelligence product built on overnight AI-moderated interviews with Washington policy insiders, is a direct result of the speed Discuss makes possible
• Discuss gives Quadrant the flexibility to use AI moderation for speed and scale or human moderation for depth, without switching platforms
• Clients get concrete evidence of AI-enabled research outcomes to advance their own internal AI adoption stories

About Quadrant Strategies

Quadrant Strategies is a full-service market research firm specializing in brand positioning and corporate reputation. Their clients include global technology companies, many of them building AI infrastructure. The firm’s internal standard is clear: technology decisions get measured against whether they make Quadrant’s researchers better at strategy. “Implementing AI in research to make it cheaper and faster actually ends up freeing people to be more thoughtful,” Afshin Mohamadi, Partner at Quadrant, told the IIEX North America audience. “It actually accentuates the creative thinking.”

What was holding Quadrant’s research operations back?

Three pressures made the status quo unsustainable.

The first was delivery speed and cost. Clients expected faster answers at lower cost, a squeeze industry data like the ESOMAR Global Market Research Report has tracked across the sector. Traditional qualitative methods required sequential sessions, manual transcription, and significant researcher time on low-judgment tasks. Finance teams were scrutinizing every scope of work, and the gap between what clients expected and what the model could deliver was widening.

The second was researcher time. Quadrant’s best people were spending hours on work that required minimal strategic judgment: transcription, quote-pulling, reformatting transcripts. “We talk a lot internally about being strategists and not order takers,” Afshin said. The goal was to get that time back.

The third was client demand for AI proof points. Sophisticated clients weren’t just asking for faster research. They needed their research partners to document AI-enabled outcomes: concrete evidence they could share internally to advance their own AI adoption narratives. These were organizations with AI mandates to meet, and they needed a partner who could help them make the case. The GreenBook GRIT Report has documented the same dynamic industry-wide: AI adoption is now an expectation, not a differentiator.

How did AI moderation change the research workflow?

Quadrant uses Discuss AI Agents to run large-scale qualitative interviews simultaneously across markets, replacing days of sequential sessions. The volume of data that previously required weeks to collect and process now comes back faster, at lower cost, with less researcher time spent on routine tasks.

“The simple and obvious improvements that really emphasize the value proposition of the underlying technology,” Afshin noted, “are what our clients are really gravitating toward.” Speed and cost savings, demonstrated clearly: that’s what moves clients from interest to adoption.

AI-assisted analysis handles the pattern-finding that once consumed researcher hours. Themes surface faster, relevant quotes get flagged, and the time between session completion and a client-ready output shrinks. Researchers redirect that time toward interpretation, strategic framing, and the counsel clients are actually paying for.

How does Discuss combine AI moderation and human research for agencies?

Not every project is right for AI moderation, and Quadrant is clear about the distinction. Message testing and concept feedback (structured, high-volume work) are well suited to AI moderation. Projects where in-the-moment judgment changes what gets uncovered stay with human moderators. The choice stays with the researcher. The platform supports both.

Discuss is built on the principle that AI and human expertise work best together. AI moderation scales what a skilled researcher can do. Human moderation adds the judgment, probing, and contextual depth that AI alone can’t replicate. At Quadrant, that shows up as a three-layer model: AI handles routine work at the base, AI and researchers collaborate on pattern-finding in the middle, and strategic thinking stays at the top with the people who know the client. “The routine is AI. The strategic thinking stays with our people, and frankly makes them better, quicker,” Afshin said.

Discuss also gives Quadrant a centralized, searchable repository where every completed study is queryable and available for longitudinal analysis. Teams surface relevant findings from past work in seconds rather than commissioning new studies from scratch. Research compounds instead of resets, and the organization’s understanding of clients and markets grows more useful with every project.

What new products did AI-powered research make possible for Quadrant?

DC Navigator is Quadrant’s proprietary weekly intelligence report, built on overnight AI-moderated interviews with Washington policy insiders. Fresh intelligence goes to clients every Monday. The cadence depends entirely on the speed that AI moderation and AI-assisted analysis make possible.

Quadrant also now extracts quantitative visualizations and analysis directly from qualitative interviews, giving enterprise clients both the what and the why in a single deliverable. The ability to combine statistical output with qualitative depth, without running separate studies, changes what a research scope can include.

Both capabilities exist because AI moderation made the underlying data collection fast and cost-effective enough to sustain them. New product formats follow from new operational speed.

What results has Quadrant seen since adopting Discuss?

The numbers are Quadrant’s own: project turnaround cut in half, cost per project cut in half, researchers freed to focus on the strategic work clients are paying for.

Cross-project knowledge compounds. A centralized research repository means past work informs new hypotheses rather than sitting in archived folders. Researchers spend less time reconstructing context and more time building on it.

Clients have what they need to make the internal case for AI adoption. Faster delivery, leaner project scopes, and new product formats give clients concrete evidence of AI-enabled outcomes in practice. For organizations with their own AI mandates, that proof is worth as much as the research itself. Quadrant has explored this theme further alongside Forrester in the Discuss webinar Research Reinvented: How to Master GenAI and Ensure You’re Not Left Behind.

Why does Discuss work for research agencies running both AI and human research?

Discuss is an always-on market insights solution that gives research agencies AI-moderated interviews, a centralized and searchable research repository, and human-led qualitative research in one platform. It operates across 150+ countries and supports 50+ languages.

Discuss is a Forrester Wave Leader for Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026. Forrester gave Discuss the highest possible score in AI-powered research methods, live interviews, participant quality, data analysis, and platform usability, among other criteria.

For an agency like Quadrant, the single-platform model matters because it keeps the efficiency model intact. AI moderation, human moderation, and the searchable repository all feed the same intelligence base. Every project Quadrant runs with Discuss makes the next one faster and better informed.

Quadrant isn’t the only agency working this way. See how Walnut Unlimited delivers customer voices quickly and how buzzback chose Discuss as its tech partner, or browse all Discuss customer stories.

FAQ

Ready to see what this looks like for your organization? Talk to us or download the Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 — the independent evaluation that named Discuss a Leader in the category.