A Marketing MRI takes four to six weeks because evidence and stakeholder accounts have to be tested in sequence. The first explanation is rarely enough. Data may support part of it, another stakeholder may expose a missing dependency, and the operating reality may contradict both.
Four weeks can suit a contained scope with prompt stakeholder access and evidence that is usable when the work begins. Six weeks may be required where several markets, business units, systems or stakeholder groups have to be examined and reconciled.
This is a calendar window, not twenty to thirty billed consulting days. The fixed scope and fee are agreed before work begins from the evidence boundary, stakeholder access and the decision the work must support.
Urgency can change the order in which evidence is examined. It does not make incomplete evidence complete. Compressing the work past the point at which competing explanations can be tested would produce faster output, but weaker decisions.
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