I worked with the wonderful folks at UXPin to write a short e-book on how to overcome some of the challenges of doing user research in large organizations. From the introduction:

Once a company grows over a certain size, the internal politics and number of people involved in every decision increase so much that it becomes virtually impossible to stay focused on fulfilling user needs and business goals. Instead, the focus turns inward to the opinions and whims of individuals inside the company. Add the complexity of designing B2B products to the mix and, well, things go bad very quickly.

When an abundance of stakeholders are involved in a product, user research is the only way to focus a whole team on the real needs and goals required for success. It’s also the only way to get people out of the habit of thinking “Well, I want this, so everyone else must want it too”—a view that I find much more common in enterprises than in smaller organizations.

If that sounds familiar to you, you’ll hopefully find the e-book useful. I discuss why it’s often so hard to get support for user research in enterprises. Then I provide some advice on how to sell the value of user research. Finally, I offer some practical tips for addressing the subtle differences of conducting research in larger organizations with users who aren’t buyers.

You can download the (free) e-book here: Practical User Research for Enterprise UX.