“In future, the challenge will be to absorb uncertainty rather than reduce it.” Max Boiset
In the past, competitive advantage was driven by scale, operational efficiency, demonstrably better quality, and/or a sustainable point of difference. Today, market fragmentation and the desire for “personalization” have made scale and efficiency harder to achieve. Consumers often value what’s new and intriguing more than truly higher quality. How do you define your point of difference when your competitive set is constantly shifting? Every industry must continually adjust its offer, route to market, and customer experience to stay competitive.
This fundamentally changes the nature and pace of business planning. Long term plans now must embrace uncertainty and incorporate the implications of a range of potential scenarios. Short term planning processes must become much more agile, building in the ability to course-correct quickly as the market changes. Planning must move from a point in time exercise to a more fluid cycle of monitor, assess, adjust, repeat. “Stick to the plan” must cede ground to responsiveness.
The way Insights teams provide data and insight to support this cycle therefore needs to change in four key ways:
- Take a wide-angle view – Categories and competitive sets are defined far more broadly than in the past and change frequently. Brands that don’t understand their true competitive set are doomed to fail, as their offer becomes less relevant and they are blind-sided by disruptors. Insights teams need to continually review the relevance of the category and competitive definitions they are using.
- Scan continuously – Reviewing “trends” once a year to support brand strategy is no longer sufficient. Responsive companies put in place systems that continuously monitor changes in the marketplace, consumer needs and habits, society, culture, etc. to identify risks and opportunities as they emerge. Not 6, 9 or 12 months later.
- Monitor for action, not information – Monitor only the metrics that truly reflect or predict a change in revenue, share or brand health. Slow-moving metrics and diagnostics don’t need to be monitored continuously. Doing so is wasteful and creates unnecessary “noise”. Backward looking measurement only exists to feed learning and to create predictive metrics that can fuel decisions.
- Learn fast to act fast – Speed of response is important, but only if the response is the right one. Marketing actions (campaigns, promotions, new products) need to be consumer driven and properly vetted before launch. But this now needs to happen in days, not weeks. Research programs need to be laser focused on key metrics and diagnostics. Even more importantly, learning from every assessment program needs to be captured and analysed over time to create guiding principles for future development. This shortens development times whilst improving success rates.
Collecting the right data and insight is critical but not sufficient to helping your organization become more responsive. The use of intelligence must be embedded into processes and ways of working. Successful companies set a clear expectation that data and insight must underpin decision-making. Strategies and tactics are built on a foundation of knowledge that includes (1) an external view of the marketplace and business environment, (2) deep understanding of the customer and (3) a thorough analysis of the effectiveness of past actions. Decision makers seek out intelligence because they know that it will make them more successful.
To achieve this, Insights teams need to adopt more responsive ways of working as well:
- Agility – Information must be available to the business when it is needed for it to have impact. This involves stronger alignment to the business plan, as well as the ability to react quickly to changing business questions.
- Always On – Identifying emerging opportunities and risks quickly is critical to success, so performance monitoring and scanning systems must be as near real-time and easily accessed by stakeholders.
- Action-oriented – Information is worthless until it is applied. Stop wasting time and money on “nice to know” or irrelevant information. Focus all efforts on what will drive better decisions.
The ability to respond faster and better to change is the key to competitive advantage today. The role of Insights has never been more important to driving business success. We have the power to help our organizations see change more quickly and respond more effectively. To get to the future first, with a better answer.
