As seen in GreenBook's Grit Report: Insights Practice 2022.

The GRIT Insights Practice report looks at the inner workings and evolving nature of insights organizations and the role of insights professionals, both brand and supplier. The report demonstrates how transformation has accelerated across the insights industry, largely due to the disruptive force of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Check out our very own, Dan Mallin CEO and founder of Lucy GRIT commentary below.

There is no question that insights professionals play a critical role across an organization. They are a strategic partner to sales, product marketing, R&D, and leadership. They are the voice of the consumer, experts on trends and curators of data. The insights they supply stakeholders influence business decisions of today and future innovations. As a vendor serving insights teams, it is important to understand their roles and the challenges that hinder them from focusing on their primary responsibilities. In our work with insights teams across industries, we have interviewed dozens or organizations to gain a clearer understanding of needs and goals. Through these interviews, we have found five pain points that seem to universally stand out.

Too much data, too many places

It is a challenge to find answers from the owned or licensed data spread across too many tools, systems, and “folders.” With so much information in so many places, it is hard to know what there is, where it is and how to leverage it when needed. It is impossible to find THE best answer. Even if you can keep track of all of the sources, nobody has the time to search them all for the specific answers needed. “Where do I even begin?” With limited time to get the work done, there is only so much time you can spend finding out what’s available. “Search finds documents, we really appreciate answers”

A Limited View

Each tool has its own interface that requires proficiency and offers varying levels of search. None of the tools are consistent with one another. This results in spending too much time in numerous interfaces (“if I even remember the sources I have logins for”). With no triangulation of the data, you are left to wonder how you could possibly have the complete picture.

Same Question; Different Day

There are so many questions from various constituents, it is hard to have the time to answer all of them. Often the same questions are asked again and again. This redundancy requires locating and re-presenting work that has already been published. This is very disruptive as each query takes time and distracts from planned work. “If we could get our clients to start with the search before reaching out, that would save a tremendous amount of time.”

The game of Guess who?

With the frustration of finding past information when needed, the current state is to ask others to help. The round trip from asking the question to getting a response can consume many hours. (Even in the best response times, with one in Australia and one in Europe, the answer is delayed for at least a day). “If I happen to get lucky and track down someone in the know, it’s still difficult to access the learnings. They need to extract relevant information for me.”

Groundhogs Day

“How do I know the work wasn’t done before?” There’s no way to know what everyone else (including predecessors) have worked on. If you don’t know who to contact or where to look, the risk of duplication is high. This is both time consuming and expensive. In real time, different team members are receiving similar or related requests from clients; redundancies continue.

Listening to the voice of insights groups, the inefficiencies are clear. They also provide a roadmap to where technology can drive the most value. New capabilities have already emerged, and much groundwork laid for an empowering path ahead. Working in partnership with clients and vendors, we look forward to continuing to make huge gains in delivering total Knowledge Management to ease these common pain points.