ByBillee Howard,
Senior Contributor.
Leading organizations must modernize their insights and market research functions today because the landscape of customer expectations, technology, and competition has fundamentally shifted. There are many reasons why including: data abundance which requires smarter synthesis and actionable human insight, the need for uncovering the why behind the what in the new emotion economy—which traditional data sets often don’t do. Finally and most importantly, because brand differentiation, which is a critical business imperative in today’s landscape, will only come via deeper customer understanding.
The bottom line: modernizing insights is no longer about better market research—it’s about building a living system of intelligence that fuses data, emotion, and foresight to guide every strategic decision. The organizations that fail to adapt will be left with blind spots that will likely lead to lagging business performance.
For all these reasons, I wanted to speak to an industry thought leader who has his pulse on exactly how leading organizations must be thinking about insights modernization. Critical to success will be finding ways to effectively move away from a sea of endless dashboards to real-time intelligence engines that drive better business decision-making at the highest levels of an organization. Nick Graham is among the leading consumer insights professionals in the world. He is an industry veteran who has led the function at leading companies such as PepsiCo and Mondelēz International. Following is a recap of our conversation:
