Disrupting the status quo – The three characteristics shared by enterprises that succeed through consumer insights
By Ged Parton, Chief Executive Officer | May 27, 2021
If anyone believed that COVID-19 and its associated restrictions may have given enterprises a chance to slow their pace and plan the way forward on a relaxed schedule, then they have been sorely disappointed. The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformations, fueled technological innovation and investment, and disrupted the workforce in ways that few could have imagined just 18 months ago. Unsurprisingly, rapid change has impacted insights delivery too.
One of the biggest pressures that we have seen is on enterprises to develop stronger consumer insights in less time.
We are privileged to work with many leading firms across verticals from financial services to consumer goods to healthcare. We can see that the winning companies share an outlook focused on using real time data, measures that create deep understanding, and powerful analysis tools to drive commercial success.
Speed of discovering and actioning customer insights predicts market winners
Just as industry change is rapidly increasing, in this technology-enabled, overwhelmed-with-data world, the speed of winning and losing is also accelerating. Businesses who cannot quickly make sense of and act on business data and insights at speed will suffer losses to competitors who can. The ability to access data in near real-time to inform action plans has become mission critical.
Many of our enterprise clients prioritize this need for speed.
In the grocery industry, for example, where razor-thin margins are driven by intense competition, the ability to access and rapidly act on data is essential. Real time data delivery through live dashboards is essential.
Real time reporting on metrics such as ‘ease of shopping’ or ‘checkout queue length’ versus historical benchmarks provide managers with the tools to make immediate corrective decisions to optimize profitability. Customized insights reports, filtered, scheduled, and distributed to local grocers in time to set daily action plans make data driven decision-making more accessible down to the employee level.
These principles from tracking data programs require sophisticated software and are now being routinely applied to one off projects. For example, as projects develop, Maru teams use our software to share links to the data in real time so clients can see progress and engage early in project execution.
Data must consider emotions and feelings to engineer better decisions
The desire for real time or near real time access to information drives the insight program choices of many of our clients. Of course, the quality of the information is as important as the speed in which it is available.
That is why many enterprises are increasingly prioritizing the ability of their teams and their partners to produce rich and textured data and conduct deep analysis on it.
The principles of Behavioral Science are at the forefront of our leading clients’ thinking. It seems that most believe that to effectively build long-lasting customer relationships you need to understand customers deeply. And this need has translated specifically into an expectation that the unsaid, the unstated, and the unarticulated will be a foundational part of insight programs. Leading enterprise clients aspire to have holistic understanding of people, to appreciate customers feelings and emotions.
This need for System 1 approaches is endemic. Many of our Consumer Goods & Services clients have this thinking at the heart of their innovation programs. It is driven by the recognition that the inclusion of emotions and feelings gives enterprises a holistic view of issues and opportunities that enables better decision making.
At Maru, our software includes our unique System 1 apps. By combining System 1 and System 2 feedback methods we make it easier for our clients to uncover customer expectations – and more importantly, how to act against them.
Without brilliant analysis and reporting, even the best data is useless.
Real time or near real time data availability of a combination of System 1 and System 2 measures are two fundamentals of the approach of successful enterprises.
At the same time, the analysis and reporting cycle is central to reach the goal of uncovering insights that matter and tell rich, informative stories the enterprise can act on. The democratization of this rich data really drives value.
We see the leading enterprises making substantial demands in this area. Commissioning clients want tools and capabilities that they can use themselves on their data sets quickly and efficiently. For instance, we see our Financial Services clients prioritizing this need. The ideal for many is a platform that allows enterprise and agency supplier alike to flex their respective analytic skills.
The Maru software environment is designed by insight professionals, for insight professionals: our Analysis & Reporting is best-in-class.
The practical features and benefits of the Maru software in depth of analysis, for example, is enhanced by leveraging dynamic feedback tags to automatically collect and incorporate commercial, profile and meta data for deeper insights. Data quality and speed to completion are improved using technologies such as artificial intelligence to automatically filter unreliable responses, drastically reducing analysis time. Efficiencies are created through the ability to save filters, date ranges and modifiers for use across projects and programs. And timely, automatically scheduled reporting, allows stakeholders across your organization to stay informed and able to rapidly action insights.
Maru has been painting better pictures for our clients and their customers for over 20 years. We currently power towards 50 million survey responses per year and run complex, global programs. For example, we are running one in 32 markets, in 30 languages, across 7 brands, with end-to-end journey feedback. And we work with a wide variety of ambitious brands to deliver tangible improvements and long-term, sustainable impact to their business with our award-winning programs. We achieve this by delivering deep analysis of the most comprehensive measurement set at speed.
Reach out to the Maru team today to learn more about how our world-class analytics and reporting capability can help you discover stronger insights to help drive success for your business.