So, you want to measure the ROI (or Business Impact) of your Insights Department, but don’t know where to begin. How about with your agency partner? Your agency partner is a valuable resource you can leverage to help you with the underpinnings of your ROI story. How? I’m glad you asked…

Let’s Begin with a Shared Understanding of the ROI of Insights.

ROI can rarely be boiled down to just one number. At least in the world of Insights, ROI comes in many forms, including financial metrics (e.g. profit or revenue growth), meaningful non-financial metrics (e. g. , incre ases in brand preference, improved NPS scores, or decreases in customer churn) or even positive qualitative feedback on the impact of insights on the business from an important stakeholder.

So, What can Your Agency Partner do for You?

Before a proposal is even contemplated, share the business objectives broadly and completely. And not just the obvious objectives, but the next layer too – how will the decisions made based on this research impact the business? If you’re not sure, find out. That’s critical to the “return” portion of the ROI equation. Then work closely with your agency partner and talk about exactly how the proposed research will provide the input into the specific decisions to be made, or said another way, how the research will deliver the expected ROI. Importantly, this is the time to think about the variables you will use to measure the ROI and ensure the research includes whatever variables you’ll need.

There can be no ROI if there is no action. So, working with your agency partner on a plan and process for communicating the insights is as important, if not more important, than any other component of the research. Communicating simply, in a way that can be acted upon is how we turn data into meaning. Yet, it is too often an afterthought.

So, start with the end in mind (thank you, Steven Covey). Talk to your agency partner about how you intend to disseminate the insights from the research. Perhaps your partner can help you with ideas – ways to communicate meaningfully for action. Allow yourselves to try something different if you believe it will have the impact to influence action.

Finally, set aside time to talk to your agency partners about your goals in measuring the ROI of insights. Develop solutions together.

• Which projects delivered a strong/weak ROI and why?
• On which projects has measuring the ROI been a challenge?
• How should these projects be improved to allow for better measurement?

Measuring the ROI of Insights is not easy. But progress is far more important than perfection: you should fear not measuring ROI far more than whether your measurement is perfectly accurate.

David Rothstein

CEO, RTi Research

From our research, as well as from all the discussions we have we had over the last few years, we know that very few people in our sector, whether on the client and supplier side, had the Business Impact of Insights as a KPI for 2019.

However, as you look back on 2019, why not at least make Business Impact a part of your annual review process?

Whether you are conducting a review of an individual’s, a team’s or a company’s performance in 2019 we recommend that you ask yourself a few simple questions:

• Which projects delivered a strong/weak ROI/Business Impact in 2019 and why?
• How could these projects be improved to deliver a stronger ROI/Business Impact?
• Should we stop doing any of these projects?
• What new things should we consider for 2020 that could deliver an even stronger ROI/business impact?

Don’t worry if you currently don’t have the metrics to hand to get a precise answer to the first question, as our experience tells us that, even without precise metrics, you should be able to identify the key wins in 2019, as well as the changes you need to make moving forward in 2020.

We recommend that you use the GRBN ROI of Insights Framework when conducting the annual review:

You can learn more about the Framework and how to use it to measure your ROI/Business Impact in the GRBN Building Business Impact Handbook, which you can access from here.

tips from the pros

Here are some of the tricks that advanced Insights functions are deploying to measure their impact:

• When reviewing the Business Impact of your work, think about it at a business decision, and not project level
  • Ultimately it’s those business decisions that Insights needs to impact
• Also, look to forecast the future impact of your work, not just measure the actual impact so far
  • Don’t ignore the long-term impact of Insights: Much of the Business Impact from your work last year won’t be realized until later. Forecast that impact, don’t just ignore it
• Finally, think about ROI in broad terms, not just financial metrics
  • Sure, financial metrics are the gold standard, but we know that they cannot always be forecast, let alone measured, when it comes to the impact of Insights. Also use surrogate metrics such as preference, brand equity, customer loyalty etc… to measure/forecast the impact of your work.

Good luck with your review!

While the value of proving out ROI is clear in nearly every business case, it’s less obvious where to begin.  Before getting overly transfixed on sophisticated models and calculations, it’s best to adopt what we call an “ROI mindset.”

Below is a five-step framework to guide organizations along the path towards embedding customer-centered ROI-based decision making in its programs and initiatives:

1. Take Stock of What You Have

ROI is a function of input and output.  Input is the investment into customer initiatives (e. g. measurement platforms, focus groups, surveys).  Output is both the information extracted from these efforts and the application of the information to foster better decision making.

Although it may sound simple on paper, many organizations feel they’re not realizing an ROI on customer information simply because they don’t know the breadth of information they’re collecting to begin with—let alone how it is applied.

The first step towards understanding an ROI on customer information is getting a firm handle on what information is being produced today.  Conducting a data audit throughout the organization will identify where sources of customer information live, how to access them, what questions each source can answer, and which holes still must be filled.

2. Establish a Baseline

After the data audit is complete it will be possible to see each initiative that has been conducted or is in the works, and what customer information it yields.  However, this is only half of the equation.  The other half is linking the information collected with actual results to set a baseline for comparison against future improvements.

Ideally, it will be possible to pair each information source with one or more quantifiable financial outcomes, yet this is large ask.   A great middle ground is

to compare customer information investments against changes in customer KPIs over time.  While not perfect, it lays the groundwork for more sophisticated ROI efforts and expresses customer-information ROI in terms of customer outcomes.  If possible, bringing in aggregate-level financial data over the same time period, such as growth percentage, highlights the way customer KPIs impact financial results, completing the link.

3. Communicate Results and Establish a Culture of ROI

Make sure others in the organization are aware of the customer information being collected and the impact it’s creating for the organization.  Without this step, it’s impossible for stakeholders to see the value of the investments they are making. All of that said, ROI will be new to many within the organization and colleagues may not be used to digesting or requesting ROI.  Bring them along on the journey with you.  Set up trainings to get others up to speed on any new terminology and begin making ROI a component of initiatives going forward.  Ensure stakeholders receiving ROI reports are comfortable with inputs being used and how results are calculated.

Establishing a culture of ROI increases engagement with the decision-making processes, making it easier for those involved to see the impact customer information initiatives are making.

4. Refine the Toolset and Improve Decision Making

Up to this point ROI efforts have been focused mainly around ad hoc requests to prove results on initiatives that have already been completed, using data that is already available.  The next step is to create more robust and scalable processes, so your team focuses less on running the calculation and more on being strategic business partners.

What does a strategic business partner look like from an ROI standpoint?

• Evaluating initiatives before they start as well as after to ensure only the highest-impact plans are funded
• Having the vision for what information the organization needs from a financial and customer standpoint and taking the initiative to get those sources established so they’re in place when needed
• Creating models which link your financial data with customer data to tailor the expected and realized impact to your bottom line
• Partnering with finance to adopt their ROI reporting standards so executives receive ROI in terms they’re used to seeing
•  Leveraging Data Engineering and Data Sciences resources to integrate into internal data pipeline and create ever-more-accurate tools for on-demand access – decreasing resource load and improving the speed of results

5. Communicate Impact

For stakeholders to feel the impact of their customer information investments they must see it as well. Examples of when communication could be helpful, include:

Before funding an initiative, forecast its impact and use the predicted return as a focal point of the planning process. This will help to identify tradeoffs between available options as well as show how your team is a strategic steward of the company’s resources.

At the end of the year, summarize the team’s activities and link those quantifiable, financial outcomes.

When projects are completed, report back to the team and others the success of their efforts and how that compares against past initiatives.

JOHN JOBA

Gongos, Inc.

Quirk’s recently published a sneak peek at some early results from its Q Report, a survey of corporate researchers. I generally enjoy reading this study and getting a broad picture of how organizations, across a spectrum of industries and sizes are anticipating and managing the dynamic changes impacting the profession. I was more than a little disheartened when I read the responses to an open-ended question in the 2019 survey which asked Quirk’s researchers, “What are the key metrics against which your marketing research and insight function is judged?” A large number of respondents reportedly summed it up with one word, “None.” Others were equally concerning such as the two below.

“None! Executives and leaders throughout the org. like us & use us, and we’ve not been asked to quantify our value with specific metrics (Yet!!! Dreading the day it comes.).”

“Our group is very highly thought of and we don’t really have key measures we’re trying to hit. We make up some things to have goals, but people love what we do for them and they heavily rely on us.”

Do you yourself see Insights as an investment?

This really begs a question of all corporate researchers, “How do we expect our business partners and senior executives to value the investments they put in into research, if we don’t?” According to ESOMAR, over $70 billion a year is spent by corporations, NGOs, foundations and government on deriving insights from consumers, customers and citizens.

Management has a lot of choices as to where they wish to invest if they are interested in Customer Insights. Gartner reports that traditional Customer Insights teams are under pressure from both internal and external forces including new competitors, data availability, adjacencies, and competing functions such as IT, UX, CX, CI, and where it’s a separate function, data analytics. All on the backdrop of an ecosystem driven by increased time pressure and heightened customer expectations. In this context, how is management to know what value they have derived from research spending, if we don’t measure and report it? I believe that if don’t think of insights as an investment, the function risks being treated as a line item cost that quickly becomes a target in times of austerity or when funding is needed for another investment (such as in data infrastructure).

The Quirks respondents, sadly, are not in the minority. Three years ago, when Boston Consulting Group, Cambiar and the Yale Center for Consumer Studies jointly published a series of papers on the management of insights in major corporations, they found that only 20% of Customer Insights functions could be considered as being strategic partners or sources of competitive advantage for their organizations. That is, only 1 in 5 were demonstrably adding real value. One of the contributing factors to why more aren’t engaged in measuring ROI, is that it’s hard to measure. Another quote from the Quirk’s study below speaks to this challenge.

“This is tough; leadership wants to see ROI but I am a cost center for the organization. The research conducted has positive influence on our future products however those aren’t often seen immediately – so it becomes hard for leadership to see why we should spend.”

Difficult is no excuse for doing nothing

What I would challenge is that just because it is difficult, or we cannot do it for everything, does not mean we should give up on doing it at all. I recommend starting with the studies where it is relatively easy to link the impact of the study to revenue or cost savings, or even projected ROI such as with copy testing. There are also surrogate measures in cases where direct revenue isn’t so easy to calculate – for example, increases in customer retention or improvements in adherence. One of the things I appreciate about the Handbook is that it gives me new ideas and approaches to thinking about how to measure impact. Because, no, I can’t do it all of the time but if I get into a measurement mindset, it becomes part of the culture and part of how I think about the value of what I do.

Get the right mindset

People tend to do what they are incentivized to do in business, so if we reward people for producing studies or spending money, this is exactly what they will do. I often share that my job is not to “make studies, but to create Business Impact”. This is a fundamental mindset shift in how we think about our roles that has a tremendous impact on how we perform. If our focus is on treating research as an investment in insight, then we ask different questions as we begin a study. Instead of asking just for the time and budget and maybe a catering order, we focus our discussion on the Business Impact of the study itself, what are the desired business outcomes, key performance metrics, decision criteria, and the impact of a GO or NO GO decision.

This shift may feel subtle. But as we change our thinking about the work that we do, we change how we speak to our business partners and how we measure our success. Even people who have actively resisted the notion of measuring an ROI on research have shared with me that when they started asking these questions, their relationships with their business teams changed. They were viewed increasingly as strategic partners versus a service that delivers studies. And interestingly, more studies then in turn delivered a measurable Business Impact.

Having an ROI and Business Impact mindset creates a virtuous circle. The more case studies and testimonials you have, the more the work of the function is proven and perceived by senior management to have a positive ROI, the more it is seen as an investment and less as a cost line item. If the ROI is consistently significant, then the more the company will be willing to invest in it and the greater the value that will be derived for the organization over the long term.

Get measuring and showcase your value

 Peter Drucker once said “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. This is certainly true of insights. Some years ago, Kim Dedecker, when she was leading consumer insights at P&G, bemoaned the fact that 70% of her budget was going to rear view mirror, more on validation and too little to predictive and innovative initiatives. By measuring your impact, you can see this effect more clearly and make strategic decisions with the evidence to support your recommendations to business leaders on where they should place their investments. Once you measure the impact of what you do, it becomes fairly obvious which types of studies deliver greater ROI and business impact.

My experience has been that researchers have a really hard time saying “no”. We like to please, myself included. However, as we begin to measure impact, it becomes easier to prioritize and push back on those projects that are unlikely to deliver significant return, or to suggest an alternative course that would provide more value to the brand. As a result, you begin almost by default to devote more resources to strategic, rather than purely tactical, studies. So rather than thinking of measurement as something to be dreaded and avoided at all costs, how can you begin to think of it as an opportunity to showcase your value?

Lisa R. Courtade
Department Head, Global
Customer & Brand Insights, Merck

It’s been a busy year for GRBN when it comes to Business Impact. Not only have we launched the new Building Business Impact Handbook, but we have conducted a major new piece of research on the topic, given several conference presentations, run numerous workshops, and together with our partner Cambiar have trained hundreds of Insights professionals on how to measure the ROI of Insights and how to demonstrate Insights’ Business Impact.

2020: More help for Insights leaders in stage 1 and 2

As those of you who regularly follow us know, we are disciples of the BCG, Cambiar and Yale seminal work on the maturity of the Insights function. Our focus to date has largely been on helping companies get to stage 4, which at its core demands that the Insights function has a systematic approach to measuring their ROI and demonstrating the value they are adding to the business. In short, Insights leaders in stage 4 are first and foremost Business leaders, and secondarily Insights leaders.

 

 

What we have learned during our discussions with hundreds of Insights professionals, is that whilst stage 4 is hugely aspirational,  the journey to get there can seem quite daunting. The jump directly from stage 1, or even stage 2 to stage 4 is indeed a big one.

Gearing up for 2020

So, in 2020 we want to do more to help all Insights leaders no matter what stage of maturity their function is currently in. If you don’t know what stage you are in, we recommend you take the BCG self-assessment test which can be found here.

We have further developed our range of tools and services, so that if your function is in stage 1 we can help you put in place and implement a strategy to get you to stage 2. If you are in stage 2, we can help you get to stage 3. We will of course continue to help those in stage 3 get to the stage 4, as well as help those in stage 4 make sure that they keep pushing the boundaries of what it means to have a best-in-class Insights function.

Please get in touch to find out how we can help you take your Insights function to the next level. Let’s climb the mountain together.

The short answer is many are not, and I’ll tell you why

As 2020 is just around the corner, I’m asked more and more whether Insights functions are fit for the demands of the next decade. My answer is that unfortunately most are not. In fact, many are facing budget cuts as they are simultaneously being asked to do more and more. Fortunately, some Insights functions are ready and are being given the extra resources to be fit for the 2020’s. Why is this?

I imagine many of you are familiar with the Insights Function Maturity Model which was deployed by BCG, Cambiar and Yale to benchmark the maturity of the Insights function. If you are not, then a good place to read more about this model is in the BCG-GRBN report on the ROI of Insights, which you can access from here.

The benchmarking was carried out in 2009 and again in 2015, and as the chart below shows most Insights teams remain in the lower two boxes:

An Insights leader recently asked me what is the situation now? As the study has not been updated since 2015 (at least not yet), I can only give me opinion on what has happened. This opinion is, however, informed by the experiences of more than 500 Insights leaders we have either interviewed, talked to or worked with over the last year.

My short answer is that some progress has been made from stage 2 to stage 3, but almost no progress has been made towards stage 4.

Some shift from stage 2 to 3

Firstly, let’s look at how Insights functions are shifting from stage 2 to stage 3 in order to become strategic business partners. There are three ways this is principally happening:

• More of the Insights functions we talk to are doing more product/service/process improvement research, i.e. agile research. This enables them to give immediately actionable insights and recommendations to the business.
• More Insights functions are embedding staff in the business units, which enables them to be more proactive responding to business needs and available to advise decision-makers in the moment.
• More Insights functions are deploying CI knowledge management tools for self-service of data and insights.

Further good news is that some progress is also being made towards stage 4 on a couple of key metrics:

• Some Insights functions are doing a better job at integrating multiple data sources to provide a single point of view on the customer/consumer. This is partly driven by restructuring, which is bringing Customer Insight (CI) and Customer Analytics (CA) into the same team (or at least under the same boss). Some organizations are also managing to integrate Customer Experience (CX) into the same group.
• Some Insights functions are deploying more advanced (machine-learning-based) knowledge management systems allowing them to create a learning organization both within and without the Insights function.

Little progress towards stage 4

But, as you can imagine based on the title of this thought-piece, there are many areas in which Insights functions have made little or no progress, which is partly hindering their ability to become true strategic business partners and severely hindering their ability to become a source of competitive advantage in their businesses:

• Insights functions have made little or no progress on measuring their ROI and demonstrating their business impact. At the same time other functions, such as CX and Digital Marketing, have been doing this with gusto. Simply put, budget is going towards those who measure and demonstrate their value, away from those who don’t.
• Few Insights functions have made progress in taking a more active role in decision-making, either as having a role in setting the business agenda or vetoing decisions. In the few cases we know of, where this is the case, the impact is huge.
• Relatively few Insights functions are investing significantly in strategic, innovative/new, forward-looking, and predictive Insights work. Much more needs to be invested in modelling for example. A greater proportion of budget needs to be reserved and used for innovation/experimentation. Where significant investment is made in strategic work, for example, in segmentation work, the work often falls flat because Insights does not play a strong enough role in implementing the Insights from this work.
• Only a few Insights functions are investing in developing business consultancy expertise within the CI team, either through training or through new recruitment strategies. One concern is that we know from the WFA/System 1 research that there is a huge mismatch between how Insights professionals see themselves and how the business decision-makers see Insights professionals as strategic consultants. Basically, half of Insights functions are doing nothing to develop their competency here when they should be because of this dillusion.
• Few Insights functions are radically changing their external partner programs. In fact, many are moving in the wrong direction. Firstly, they are allowing procurement to dominate, making cost rather than business value the number one decision-making criteria. Secondly, many Insights functions, in their drive to hit their budget efficiency KPIs are in-sourcing, rather than outsourcing, low value-add and commoditized activities.

So, what does this mean for 2020?

For Insights function leaders, it means that if you want to be fit for the next decade and increase your resources, you urgently need to get going creating and implementing a Business Impact Maximization strategy. A good place to start with that is here.

Experience tells us that standing still is not an option, so if you are not ready to embrace this brave new world then, you will more likely than not see decreasing budgets and decreasing headcount in your future. You will become less and less effective as a result.

For agency leaders, it means that you have a huge stake in helping your clients progress from stage 2 to stage 3 and ultimately to stage 4 as quickly as possible. It means you need to be proactive and even invest in making this happen. The ROI calculation of doing vs not doing this speaks for itself.

Whichever side of the client-agency table you sit, good luck in making wise choices over the next couple of months. The future depends on it.

Andrew Cannon

Executive Director

GRBN

If there is just one book that an incoming corporate Head of Insights absolutely needs to read, it is the Building Business Impact Handbook. Come to think of it, any Head of Insights should read it. Because this is not just a handbook or a manual. It is a bible that shows exactly how to increase the business impact of an insights function on an organization – and, in doing so, increase its own resources and budget.

The book’s key premise is that actually measuring the business impact of consumer insights on the success of an organization is fundamentally linked to the strategic value that the insights function offers. It not only presents comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evidence to build the case for measuring business impact but also goes on to provide a detailed framework of exactly how to do so, complete with processes and templates.

The Building Business Impact Handbook makes it clear that measuring impact requires a new mindset and is a cultural decision. To that end, it is required reading not only for insights leaders but also all of their staff and associates. In order to make this an economic possibility, GRBN offers licenses that are very reasonably priced and that deliver both the Handbook and the templates to all in the insights function.

I thoroughly recommend all Heads of Insights to buy a license and to start on the journey to measurement and to building their business impact.

Simon Chadwick

Cambiar

As Insights professionals, part of our job is to spot and understand changes in the macro environment. When we see early signals of the external world changing with implications for our company’s strategy, we must ask ourselves, as Insights leaders, what role do we want to have in shaping the future of the company? What impact do we want the Insights function to have? Is the team ready to play that role and is it set up to have optimal impact to drive company growth? Our answer to this should inform the (potentially evolving) mission of the insights function and subsequently, the team’s strategy for delivering on its mission.

One may say, what we offer the company as an Insights function is the confidence to make smart, timely business decisions leveraging customer-centric, fact-based and data-driven perspectives and strategic advice. It means:

• Complementing deep business knowledge with externally-focused audience expertise to provide more contextually relevant and actionable insights to inform and shape business decisions.
• Combining related business disciplines under one consulting leadership to help realize synergies in business issue diagnosis, while elevating top enterprise (product-agnostic) insights needs.
• Keeping abreast of the latest developments in research, analytics and emerging methods to ensure we accelerate the development of new capabilities that would optimize insights-generation approaches.
• Enabling faster and better decisions along the value chain, improving speed and agility with streamlined processes and standardization where appropriate, identifying and leveraging best practices.

To successfully achieve the above, some capabilities matter more than others. The profile of skills and expertise that are needed for the team must be in support of these capabilities.

 Business consulting

• Diagnose underlying business issues
• Define knowledge gaps and research objectives
• Connect dots across initiatives and prioritize based on impact
• Advise to inform business decisions using insights

Culture and audience expertise

• Audit and synthesize findings across multiple sources for deeper insights
• Curate and infuse culture trends and audience specific knowledge into research objectives, question framework and storytelling

Operational excellence

• Identify the optimal methodological approach to reach stated objectives
• Analyze, integrate and harmonize data across sources to unlock insights
• Execute research projects in-house and stand up new capabilities as appropriate
• Devise vendor partnership strategy and optimize return on vendor investments

 

While not a capability on its own, technology enablement is a critical component, especially in the context of the future of work. More and more, we must proactively find ways to leverage technology for tactical, reactive tasks and free up time for our teams to shift more towards areas where humans add the most value and where value gets generated from insights – which is the activation stage.

Identifying the capabilities and organizational structure alone isn’t enough to organize the Insights function for maximum impact. It is just as important (if not more) to establish the ways of working and clear roles and responsibilities. Successful change management has everything to do with transparency, clear and consistent

communication, and most importantly, asking and listening for feedback. While we can design and organize for optimal impact, we must continue to seek feedback and remain open to iterative changes and adaptations.

Jackie Chan

Head of Decision Insights Group,

Prudential

1025603-00001-00

Since the initial ROI of Insights Handbook was first published, a quiet revolution has been building in the insights industry. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing momentum, corporate Insights functions have started to embrace not only the thought that measuring the impact of their insights on the business as a whole is a good idea, but also that it can and should be done.

The ROI of Insights team, consisting of GRBN, Cambiar and supported by committed sponsors, including Gongos, inc. and RTi Research (Gold sponsors of this Handbook), has been assisting banks, pharmaceutical companies, insurance firms and many others all over the world in implementing systematic measurement and reporting systems that demonstrate to management the incredible return on investment that comes from market research and data analytics.

Insights can be seen as an Investment and not just a cost

For many Insights functions, the results have been dramatic. Not only have their budgets been increased but they have more resources, greater influence in decision-making, and are viewed with increased respect. No longer are research and analytics seen as line items under “costs” in the P&L, they are now viewed as bona fide investments in the future success of the enterprise.

 

 

For the team, this was no surprise. This was precisely what they had seen in their research (conducted with BCG) of companies already measuring ROI and impact. This was what the team held out to these new pioneers of measurement as the promised rewards of implementation.

Collaboration and Creativity on the increase

But there were also other consequences that were surprises – and pleasant ones at that.

The first of these was that measurement encouraged far more collaboration in organizations than before. Because so much emphasis is laid by the measurement system on predicting impact while designing projects – asking the question “What is the likely ROI of this project?” – it became easier for researchers and analysts to pose another question: “I wonder if we could increase ROI if we brought so and so into it?” As such, we see more collaboration between market research, strategy, competitive intelligence and various different forms of analytics throughout the organization. In some cases, this even resulted in some of these functions being brought together into a new super-Insights function.

In addition, we have seen more creativity in the way in which Insights professionals are addressing business issues. In some cases, greater control over their own budgets has allowed departments to experiment more and to think of new solutions to old issues. This also extends to greater scrutiny of what the organization already knows about certain issues before diving into research that may have been repetitive and/or redundant.

Finally, we have seen that if Insights functions invite their key suppliers into the measurement loop and encourage them to seek ways to improve impact, their relationships with those agencies deepens and improves dramatically. They become true partners.

Join the Revolution

If you are not already a member of the revolution, we strongly urge you to join us and to find out for yourselves just what an impact measuring your Business Impact has on your own department’s fortunes!

Simon Chadwick

Cambiar Consulting

Corporate Researchers Conference Presentation to Highlight Findings from the Research

WASHINGTON  – October 22, 2019 – The Global Research Business Network (GRBN) today announces the release of its Building Business Impact Handbook.

The Handbook is a practical guide for Insights leaders on how to measure the ROI and demonstrate the value of Insights to the business. At the core of the Handbook is the GRBN ROI of Insights Framework, which conceptualizes how Insights ROI measurement works. The templates and tips included in the Handbook make it easy for Insights leaders to implement their own Business Impact measurement and reporting process, and the Framework is brought to life by examples of how Insights leaders today are measuring their ROI.

The Handbook explains how the GRBN ROI of Insights Framework can be embedded within a broader strategy for Building Business Impact in order for Insights leaders to maximize the amount of impact they are having on the business. This strategy is based upon the latest research conducted by GRBN, in co-operation with the Insights Association, as well as the Handbook’s two Gold Partners, Gongos, Inc. and RTi Research.

Andrew Cannon, GRBN’s Executive Director, who is a leading expert on Insights ROI and who led the creation of the Handbook, notes: “over the last couple of years we’ve been working with Insights leaders across the globe on building their business impact. It’s great that we can have been able to include what we have learned from these leaders into the Building Business Impact Handbook in order to help even more Insights leaders increase their influence and grow their resources.”

“This Handbook can help Insights leaders better understand their organization’s journey toward customer centricity which is central to growth,” adds Camille Nicita, president & CEO of Gongos, Inc. “Key to this exploration is understanding how to develop strategies to help further embed the Insights function into the organization.”

David Rothstein, CEO at RTi Research and Board Chair of the Insights Association, says: “For insights leaders, measuring the business impact of insights is most certainly table stakes in gaining a seat at the table, and likely imperative to becoming a leadership force.  The information and advice contained in GRBN’s Building Business Impact Handbook can be a great starting point, as well as a valuable source of new ideas for anyone already measuring the business impact of insights.”

David Almy, CEO at the Insights Association, notes: “Great leaders of any truly valuable business practice are eager to champion its ROI. The synthesis of insights is a truly valuable business practice, but often with a hint of the intangible making measurement challenging but achievable using a clear roadmap to success. GRBN’s new Building Business Impact Handbook provides that roadmap, including practical, realistic tools and techniques to further the growth of insights and analytics within your company.”

At the upcoming annual Insights Association’s Corporate Researchers conference in Orlando on October 23^rd, GRBN’s Andrew Cannon and Gongos’ COO Katherine Ephlin will co-present “How Insights is Evolving to Fuel Customer-Centric Growth,” which is based on insights from the Handbook and its research. For further information on their session and the conference, visit here.

The GRBN’s Building Business Impact Handbook is available for purchase and an Executive Summary of the Handbook, curated by Gongos, is offered as a free resource. Both can be accessed at http://rla.to/grbn-business-impact

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About GRBN (https://grbn.org/)

The Global Research Business Network connects 45 research associations and over 3500 research businesses on six continents. More than US$25 billion in annual research revenues (turnover) are generated by these businesses. GRBN’s mission is to promote and advance the business of research by developing and supporting strong autonomous national research associations and undertaking global industry initiatives.

Twitter: @grbn_org

 

About Gongos (https://gongos.com/)

As a decision intelligence company, Gongos, Inc. brings a consultative approach in developing growth strategies grounded in operationalizing customer centricity.

Partnering with insights, analytics, marketing, strategy and customer experience groups, Gongos serves as a translator to help cross-functional teams fuel the competency to gain and apply consumer wisdom, transform decisions into action, and navigate organizational change. Coalescing enterprise data with primary research and curating insights for multiple audiences further empowers stakeholders to achieve greater ROI by ensuring information is designed to influence actions and behaviors from executives to the frontline.

Twitter: @_gongos

 

About RTi Research (https://rtiresearch.com/)

RTi Research is an innovative global market research and brand strategy agency based in Norwalk, CT known best for turning data into meaning; something that can be communicated simply and acted upon effectively.  RTi has been bringing the customer voice to the corporate decision-making process since 1979, leveraging a wide range of quantitative and qualitative marketing research services and methods.   The company serves a broad base of leading organizations in Financial Services, Consumer Goods, and Pharmaceuticals as well as partnering with leading academic centers of excellence.

Twitter: @RTiResearch

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