How To Build A High-Powered Insights Engine

October 20th, 2016 | Matthew Chung, Manager, Communications and Content

Mario Simon, Kantar Vermeer and Ron Lund, ACA
Mario Simon, Kantar Vermeer and Ron Lund, ACA

Operational skill once conferred competitive advantage; now it’s table stakes. The new source of advantage is customer centricity: deeply understanding your customers’ needs and fulfilling them better than anyone else.

At ACA’s October 4 Executive Forum, Mario Simon, CEO of Kantar Vermeer, shared fresh research into customer centricity, revealing that today’s fast-growing brands turn troves of data into insights and those insights into a customer-focused strategy. Or, in other words, these companies all have finely-tuned “Insights Engines.”

Speaking inside a theatre at Corus Quay to a room full of marketers and agency executives, Simon went through the highlights of Kantar Vermeer’s Marketing 2020 research from 2014, followed by an overview of its Insights 2020 research, which found that customer-centricity and revenue growth go hand-in-hand.

More specifically, over-performing companies (that is, companies that outpaced competitors in revenue growth), excel in three areas: total experience, customer obsession and their Insights Engine.

Simon broke those three areas down further, highlighting what Kantar Vermeer has identified as the 10 key drivers of customer-centric growth:

Total experience:

  • Ensuring all activities are purpose-led
  • Using data-driven insights to customize the offer
  • Using Insights & Analytics to create a consistent experience across all touch points

Customer obsession:

  • Customer-centricity embraced by all functions of the company
  • Customer-centricity is a priority for leadership
  • Collaboration driven by having the right talent available for the right project
  • Budgets allocated for experimentation

Creating An Insights Engine:

  • A Leading role for Insights & Analytics
  • Unlocking the power of all the data available
  • Changes to the Critical capabilities of people and I & A’s organization

Kantar Vermeer found that at 51% of overperforming firms, Insights & Analytics are leading the business. Their scores in the survey were four times greater than under-performers, indicating the importance of this shift – with Insights and Analytics teams moving from support roles to pro-active team players.

Simon then laid out the 10 characteristics of a successful Insights Engine.

  1. Forward looking orientation
  2. Data synthesis
  3. Whole brain thinking
  4. Integrated planning
  5. Collaboration
  6. Experimentation
  7. Independence
  8. Affinity for action
  9. Business acumen
  10. Storytelling

Of those traits, he took a closer look at talent and having whole-brained people on the Insights & Analytics team, since far more respondents from overperformers than from underperformers agreed that their insights functions were skilled at whole-brain thinking (71% versus 42%).
“This is really quite powerful,” Simon says. “The ability to fuse creative and analytical in one person and having teams that have that capability, is a capability of the future.”

In addition, independence for the Insights team is very important, Simon said, noting that at 29% of overperforming brands, the Insights team leader reports directly to either the CEO or board level, compared with 12% of underperforming companies.

Lastly, Simon focused on the importance of storytelling – a trait shared by 61% of overperforming companies compared to 37% of underperformers.
“To be able to tell stories in ways that compel and capture people’s attention in very simple and powerful ways is actually a business capability that only CEOs used to have,” he said. “And now everyone needs to have this skill.”

Simon concluded with eight takeaways that he admitted seemed obvious, but the research uncovered the majority of companies are not yet implementing:

  • Focus on products and services
  • Focus on Total Experience
  • Focus on the details of data
  • Focus on the actionability of data
  • Manage risk
  • Experiment
  • Deliver to customers
  • Co-create and innovate with customers

ACA members can access the complete Executive Forum presentation video and slide deck by visiting ACA’s Events archive.