THE ROLE OF INSIGHTS IN THE DATA ERAWhat good looks like

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Foreword

Insights functions have come a long way from being preoccupied with risk mitigation to playing a crucial role in shaping a company’s growth agenda. Insights have moved on from the ‘what’ i.e. focusing on tools and techniques, to the ‘so what’ i.e. providing insights that provoke growth-driving actions. This has resulted in Insights being invited to strategy sessions. Yet the proverbial seat at the table remains largely elusive and continues to be an aspiration.

Companies are facing growth challenges driven by increasingly competitive business landscapes combined with rapid changes in the operating environment. They are looking to data to guide them, drive growth and to help make key decisions at speed in an ever faster moving world. The importance of Insights has never been greater. The time to seize this opportunity is now, in the big data era. This can be best done by focussing on delivering the ‘now what’ i.e. delivering tangible, growth-driving actions powered by insight. This is one way in which a seat at the table will be given.

Getting the seat at the table is not just about research smarts – it is also about business smarts and being confident in the language, concepts, and applications of data. It is about delivering recommendations with conviction and strength. It is about having the courage to deliver messages that need to be heard rather than messages that people like to hear. Fierce independence and bravery are two key traits Insights professionals need to develop.

Remember… if you don’t get a seat at the table, there is a good possibility that you are on the menu!

Businesses need insights and we love generating them. Let’s take it to the next level by inspiring and provoking transformational actions that drive business growth.

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Stan Sthanunathan Former EVP – CMI, Unilever

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As the availability of data and the sophistication of models evolve, business stakeholders and leaders want a complete picture of consumer preference

The Phoenicians, builders of harbours and trading posts across the Mediterranean may seem unlikely pioneers of data-driven market research. However, the ancient civilization reputedly studied demand for their exports of dye, glass and metalwork. Since the heady days of 2500BC, market research has been constantly disrupted and energised. Whether by new statistical methods such as conjoint analysis in the 1960s, measurement techniques like Net Promoter Score or digital technology, it’s been a wild ride from classical antiquity to today.

In the era of consumer data, understanding consumers has become a different proposition again. As the availability of data and the sophistication of models evolve, business stakeholders and leaders want a complete picture of consumer preference, expecting that survey-based measurement systems will provide one of many data inputs rather than forming the backbone of market research. This represents a big shift for Consumer Market Insights

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The role of insights in the data era What good looks like

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functions (hereafter referred to as ‘Insights’ or ‘CMI’) and a challenge that the best leaders are embracing.

Ipsos’ Data Advisory Practice engagements with our large multinational clients have has given us unique insight into both CMI and key CMI stakeholders; Chief Marketing Officers, Category Leads and Country General Managers to name a few. From our work, our conversations and our analyses, a clear and consistent picture has emerged for what good looks like for Insights in the data era.

Additionally, we have conducted a benchmarking exercise of 50 Fortune 100 clients across pharma, FMCG, automotive, tech and other sectors assessing CMI data readiness. We’re in a position to share what the gold standard CMI in the data era looks like, and the activities and investments that get them there.

From our work, our conversations and our analyses, a clear and consistent picture has emerged for what good looks like for Insights in the data era

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You don’t own your business. Your consumers do. So, you [CMI] need to tell us everything about our consumers Category lead,

large food multinational

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Defining data leaders in CMI

Leading CMI functions distinguish themselves with five key attributes:

1. Integrate and synthesise data from across the business

Best in class CMI teams still commission and analyse high quality market research data. However, they go beyond this to answer business questions using all the relevant data points gathered, analysed, and synthesised across a range of teams and functions.

Stakeholders receive curated insights for quicker, better decision-making and are free to focus on actions. Getting to this aspirational state necessitates CMI teams having a level of familiarity and working knowledge of many different data sources.

Strong teams will be confident in drawing upon not only survey data but also campaign data, ecommerce and social listening data to answer business questions. In contrast, a less data-driven CMI team will use

Strong teams will be confident in drawing not only upon survey data but also campaign data, ecommerce and social listening data

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survey data as the key input leaving the stakeholder to reach out to adjacent teams (marketing, finance teams etc.) and ‘join the dots’ themselves.

A best in class example comes from a leading consumer healthcare multinational we work with. This CMI team had developed a set of use cases across their core CMI domain areas. Each use case was essentially a framework of data sources to be interrogated, understood and synthesised when answering a business question. For example, their Trends use case, rather than relying on trend reports and online qualitative only, incorporated data from search, social, ecommerce, ratings and reviews to provide a comprehensive and multi-layered read on short and long-term trends and recommendations to feed into product development and campaign planning.

2. Data product roadmaps

Many CMI teams and their sub-teams instigate programmes to ‘mine existing data’ or create data tools to aid decision-making. Best in class CMI teams appreciate that data overload is real and that creating another data tool to sit in the drawer with all the other data tools that no one has time to use is not going to be worthwhile. Strong CMI teams have gone through a rigorous process to decide which key data initiatives to focus on to drive the maximum value, focusing on 2-3 core data

products or initiatives that will really make a difference. One of our leading teams at a healthcare company took a deliberate view to develop their brand health tracking with a partner, using a variety of data sources in addition to survey data, with the result that brand equity was available in real-time. Such was the focus of this team on this core data initiative that they were able to champion the adoption of the product at all levels of the business. Brand health is now one of the top 10 KPIs used by the CEO to run this business

Creating another data tool to sit in the drawer with all the other data tools that no one has time to use is not going to be worthwhile

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3. Pioneers of the white space

Chief Marketing Officers want CMI to tell them what’s happening. They also increasingly want CMI to tell them what will be happening in five years’ time.

Without exception, senior stakeholders expect CMI to be heralds of future trends and growth. Predicting the future of course is hard and this ask tends to come in two forms; CMOs and

category leads want the longer-term view – holders of more sales/commercial acceleration roles prefer a shorter-term read on trends and how they can be translated into actions such as retailer shelf decisions.

In both cases there is a lot of data that can supplement survey research that is generally not used by CMI teams, at least not on an industrialised scale. One of our high performing teams from a leading petfood manufacturer provides a good example of using data to get ahead of short-

term trends. This CMI team had invested in their people being adept with social listening data and were able to spot, at the beginning of the first COVID-19 peak, that new pet owners would be a growing group of people. These consumers had a unique set of characteristics and concerns that differed from established pet owners – i.e. anxiety over pets’ dental hygiene and the desire to be educated – CMI were able to feed these insights rapidly into actionable recommendations for campaign and packaging decisions.

Senior stakeholders expect CMI to be heralds of future trends and growth

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4. A seat at the table

Many CMI leads expressed to us the feeling that CMI didn’t have the same ‘clout’ as adjacent teams. In extreme cases, CMI teams felt they occupied a lower status in the business than analytics or digital teams who were seen to bring the hard data perspective. Whilst some CMI teams accepted this as a ‘fait accompli’ (we can’t just become an analytics team) other teams were attacking this energetically to ensure they had presence at senior levels of the business.

We found that leading CMI functions met this challenge by taking ownership of key tools and processes and driving them through business planning. The gold standard teams had proactively taken the marketing mix modelling (MMM) program into CMI (owning the relationship with the MMM provider as opposed to building models themselves). One high performing CMI lead at a global FMCG company explained to us that taking ownership of MMM into CMI had been a priority for her as it instantly put CMI in the business of ROIs, investments and strategic planning – she felt

the focus on commercials and planning gave CMI that seat at the table in a commercially-driven business that elevated the profile and the utility of the insights her team would generate. If being the guardians of the marketing mix modelling is the indicator of what ‘good looks like’, one category lead at a global beverages company described what great looks like for CMI: he described how the CMI lead in his organisation took a ‘business partner’ approach and saw herself as bringing the consumer perspective to many decisions that would be considered commercial – for example the consumer viewpoint when the organisation looked to rationalise SKUs or bringing the consumer voice into the equation in sales negotiations as to why retailers should stock their products.

Another leading team we worked with had a more operational approach – they realised that whilst they had a lot of research, it didn’t necessarily make it into the monthly business planning meetings. They proactively offered to create the dashboards for the meetings – they would present the market share numbers and a view of what

The goal is to get to the position where no c-level meeting can take place without a CMI person being present

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was driving it e.g. increased consumption, household income etc.

In becoming more data driven, CMI teams can start to establish a presence and visibility in key business decision-making forums, annual brand planning, monthly commercial cycle meetings, leadership meetings, market visits etc. The goal is to get to the position where no c-level meeting can take place without a CMI person being present.

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How to get thereThe leaders in this space have not got here by accident, nor by virtue of ‘having a lot of data’. Orienting CMI towards a ‘data-first’ approach requires action and investment.

Capability programmes which develop the ability of CMI to work with new datasets can be a game changer – moving CMI from passive recipients of data to active participants. Upskilling CMI can also build a culture of experimentation, familiarising CMI with agile ways of working and proactive data exploration rather than waiting for a brief. These skills are neither impossible to learn nor ‘nice to have’. They are imperative skills for the future, without which, CMI risks being side-lined.

Identifying key data products can equip CMI with the data that matters to senior stakeholders to help them make good decisions. Fewer tools that are embedded into the business are infinitely more effective than more tools, more data, ‘more stuff.’

CMI should be the owners of the white space and the trends landscape. This is not limited to new product and consumption trends – trends in how people consume digital media, being an ‘economist’ to senior leadership for example. Insights are also well placed to be owners of other areas like brand lift – an internal review of the CMI offering can help to determine these opportunities.

Investing in their people

Investing in key data tools

Ownership of new data areas

The shining stars are almost unanimously doing these three things:

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Conclusion

Jane leads our data practice and specialises in helping clients become data driven; from leading data strategy work to building data products that drive revenue, growth and insight – Jane is experienced across all areas of data work. Jane was previously data director at GlaxoSmithKline and additionally has over 15 years of experience in data consulting at Accenture and EY.

CMI is an exciting place to be right now! Leading teams are putting themselves front and centre of the data era and using data to catalyse crucial business activities; enabling leaders to make good decisions, influencing the business plans and activities, and seeing the white space long before anyone else.

A few conscious, deliberate investments in CMI people, tools and scope can move CMI from being ‘research first’ to ‘data first’. A ‘data first’ CMI has a huge wealth of information, intelligence and foresight from which to light the way for a business to grow and thrive.

Jane Smith Head of Data Strategy, Ipsos MORI

www.ipsos-mori.com@IpsosMORI

Jane Smith Head of Data Strategy, Ipsos MORI

THE ROLE OF INSIGHTS IN THE DATA ERA

Ipsos MORI’s Data Advisory Practice

• We carry out Data Strategy work to

assess, benchmark and optimise

organisations and functions’ data

readiness.

• Our Data Capability programs upskill

teams to become more data-driven.

• We partner with clients to leverage

their (and other) data to build data

tools and integrate them into business

processes.