On 11th August 2021, FlexMR’s Copywriter Emily James published an article entitled Curating Insights to Drive Real-World Action in ESOMAR’s Research World publication. In this article, Emily explores the impact curating insights in the right way can have on stakeholders, their decisions, and the success of their organisation.
As insight professionals, we revel in good data and insights. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case for the rest of the world. Stakeholders of varying levels of experience and understanding of market research use insights in differing ways, and this provides differing results. But what can insight teams do to manage this? We can find the right ways to curate insights that help drive real-world action on a more reliable basis.
First, Emily talks about the factors that make curating insights better than getting stakeholders to collaborate in research itself. While collaboration has its benefits when it comes to stakeholder engagement, sometimes it’s just not feasible. For instance, stakeholders with little knowledge of research might not have the confidence to collaborate and participate within the research process itself, or they just might not have the time to get involved as much as they’d like, so having the insight team curate the insights is the next best thing.
What can we do to make the insights we generate more engaging and thought-provoking? Well first we need to understand what stakeholders we’re catering to, and make sure we present the insights in a way that will capture their attention. It’s good to have a few ways under your belt when dealing with an organisation full of different stakeholders, including:
Creative reporting - don’t be afraid to inject some creativity into the reporting and insights activation process. We now have a myriad of techniques to spice up insight reports and make it accessible to everyone, such as storytelling tactics and dynamic graphics. But taking this even further could pay off more than you realise, as FlexMR’s Insight as Art campaign can attest.
Data warehouse - a store for all the data, insights, research projects, and actions taken could have an immense positive impact on the number of insights activated within an organisation. Granted building a data warehouse is a huge undertaking, but well worth the effort and resources insight teams pour into it.
Insight forums - Insight workshops can help educate stakeholders on the value of insights and how to action them to their fullest potential in a given decision, but insight forums can provide a secondary touchpoint for stakeholders after the workshops are concluded. Regular forums help promote interactions with research and the insight team even after the insights have been actioned.
Want to find out more? Read the full article here.
Thinking from the data, research & business intelligence industry - Published by ESOMAR, the global voice of the data, research and insights community, Research World focuses on innovation and best practice in market, opinion and social research and data analytics, helping readers stay abreast of the latest developments in tools, technology and applications.