Agility in customer insights is everything.

All businesses are seeking competitive advantage by being one step ahead of the competition on fast-changing consumer preferences. ‘Agile’ has been the business world’s response, which is often misunderstood as a byword for fast.

The insight function has often been on the receiving end of this change. Traditionally preferring to take time, the insight function has been pressured to speed up by unsatisfied business partners. But it’s not necessarily speed that these partners are asking for – when we dig in, it seems that speed is only one part of the equation. It’s really about being timely.

The best insight teams are partners to the business, and they’re nimbly involved from start to finish of any project. The days of waiting for research projects to be completed before making decisions are long gone.

The challenge for insight teams is that legacy skillsets and structures are no longer fit for purpose. While specialized researchers and data analysts are still very much needed, most training and development initiatives in teams now revolve around creating T-shaped professionals, where the horizontal line represents all skills required to build a bridge with the rest of the business. The words “strategy consultants,” “commercially savvy,” “convincing communicators,” “curious challengers” and “growth mindset” have become the new must-haves.

High-performing insight teams are those in which the gap between insight and business decision-making is narrow or non-existent. In these, department heads evaluate their teams on their capacity to answer business questions, not research questions. This means an understanding of the tradeoffs between time and rigor.

But it also means resourcefulness: high-performing insight divisions are collaborating more fully with external partners to deliver better value internally. Partnerships with insights agencies and marketing/sales teams in the business are one way to train and retain talent. Collaboration with peers in noncompetitive companies is another way brands are pooling resources to generate foresight and anticipate customer behavior.

And internally, they’re collaborating more with different stakeholders, applying Design Thinking to identify where, when and how insight is being used to inform decisions so they can spot the best opportunities to input. One insight leader described this as “an ongoing journey, where insight teams need to impress stakeholders constantly to get invited back into the room the next time around.”

When it comes to timing, not every question has the same risk vs. rigor profile. We have to ask: ‘What if we get a decision wrong?’ Framing it this way helps people understand the gravity of the decision we’re trying to make and gives it the focus it deserves.  

Jami Guthrie, Vice President, Consumer Insights, McDonald’s

Anticipation is key, extending insight into the anticipation of future consumer behaviors will score points – consider using real-time predictions of purchase behaviors, forging creative partnerships with peers in non-competitive companies. A great example here is Gravity and the Foresight Academy. It’s critical to determine effective criteria for prioritizing and identifying what really matters in the business and whether additional resources are needed if the work becomes a higher priority.

By considering your insights agency as a partner, you can work with them to identify ways to speed up processes. In highly regulated industries like financial services or pharmaceuticals, this means fast-tracking internal approvals and front-loading recruitment where possible. Recruitment is often the cause of slow research and one of the reasons why a subscription model enables faster decision making.

Position your insight function as an internal agency. You’re not a go-fetch, desk-side research firm, you are an agency.  

Paul Logue, VP of Growth Analytics, Market Insights & Customer Experience, HPE

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