In a series of interviews we explore how research clients re-equip their insights teams for more impact in a fast-changing world. This time we speak to Julia Lage, user insights analyst at OLX Brasil.
How can insights teams lean into accelerating change to identify opportunities that create new value for their employers and themselves?
There are some simple things that can be done in order to provide a good environment for growth led by effective insights. One of them is understanding that the insights team cannot be isolated from the company strategies and goals.
When the company is open about where they want to get, the question is clearer for everyone and so will be the answer. Delivering in a relevant way is also crucial: once you know the question to be answered, you must deliver the answer in a straight way. At the same time, you must be able to promote/create empathy. People tend to forget numbers but they don’t forget stories. Once the company has understood its users, and had an insight into their hearts, the path to find opportunities becomes smoother. It is also important to recognise that we are not always able to bridge the gap between the insight and the opportunity. When you show your co-workers how you can apply their insights in a relevant format, they will remember better how this helps the company in identifying opportunities.
Is it only data scientists and analysts that are needed to deal with the latest changes? If not, what other new skills are required?
Definitely not just data scientists and analysts. Being aware of the global changes is fundamental. Our management team needs to understand that there are new ways of pursuing relevant consumers/user insights. But they also need to know this is because users are changing the way they do things.
For example, in a world where someone can be exposed to a million pieces of information in a single day, we can’t measure things the way we used to when there was not much more than TV advertising. People are providing data all the time; we need to quantify and qualify that data in different ways. Social listening, big data, and analytics are must-haves nowadays. And I also think being attentive is the major skill for anyone interested in peoples’ insights. Listen to people: the uber guy, your teenage niece, the people at the supermarket. What do people care about? What are they doing? You should be genuinely interested in people. This is something that does not require any kind of degree. Being open to a world that changes every five minutes is just as fundamental in this information age.
Does this also call for improved soft skills like communication and lateral thinking?
I do think so. Having this huge amount of information is a challenge that only lateral thinking can solve. Never before did insight providers have so many different kinds of data at their disposal. We are always fighting for people’s attention, even within our own companies, so we need to communicate things properly. We need to build things in unusual ways. Not every research study demands a PowerPoint presentation, we can instead dig deeper into getting to know our users. We will not provide relevant insights if we keep doing the same thing. Technologies are changing, and so are the ways we communicate our insights.
Is it easier to import new talent or to identify areas of training and work environments that can accelerate knowledge acquisition and career development?
I think training and providing good work environments are much more effective in the process of impacting and achieving results.
An insight-friendly environment is much more important than hard skills in research. If everyone starts to understand how important it is to hear our users and consumers, we will probably see a company where everyone is always looking for insights in their daily activities. So we don’t need just one good research area, but a research- and insights-driven environment throughout the entire company. A good user-insights team is one that can help people achieve milestones in all of their projects, rather than just delivering huge reports every once in a while. And this process doesn’t need to be top-down; it can – and will have to be – be bottom-up. We need to get people involved in our insights analysis, being part of team challenges and share information all the time.
About OLX Brasil
OLX stimulates a culture of conscious consumption, connecting people so they can buy and sell in a quick and easy way. We are the biggest name of the Shared Economy and leader of the online buying and selling market in Brazil. With half million daily new ads and about 2 million sales per month – around 50 per minute –, OLX is one of the fastest growing technology companies in Brazil.Present in the country since 2010, nowadays OLX has offices in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro adding up a team of more than 600 professionals.
In recent years, OLX has invested and launched specialist and vertical platforms for professional real estate and car advertisers – in 2017, the company launched Storia Imóveis and, in 2018, launched Autoshift.OLX Brazil is the result of a partnership between the two largest groups of media and investment in marketplace in the world: the South African Naspers and the Norwegian Schibsted.
