DATA DIRECTIONS
Technology is democratizing the data space, empowering the specialists as their organizations increasingly ask the insights function to do more during turbulent times. It feels as though these are turbulent times for insights professionals as there’s a lot that’s happening within the discipline. This is particularly a sizable challenge inside of large corporations. That said, the data that’s available and the access to the data is so much better and richer than it has ever been and the technology is so much more effective and precise than it’s ever been. The technology that can bring it all together has arrived.
It’s exciting because everything is moving in a direction to empower people. Five years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible to think about identity graphs or built- in privacy. Contemporary technology is going to help democratize everything that’s happening and it’s going to be empowering for people in the space. The survey respondents’ biggest strengths are aligned with what our clients would say. People are moving out of the research mindset and into an insight and analytics mindset. They are maturing their organizations and they’re becoming a resource for the rest of the company. In the most sophisticated clients, we see where they have built a great center of excellence around this new vantage point. We’re hearing things like “every brand comes to them with their questions and they’re getting their answers.” Leading organizations have installed a well formed, well-oiled machine. Other organizations are still struggling to establish that same infrastructure. In terms of respondents’ biggest weaknesses , the budget is actually a misnomer for the actual problem. The reality is that money is being poured into this space, but I think it’s a common issue of the silos that get built up. They might have formed a chief data officer or a data science team. The data science team is building out a data lake, they’re
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INSIGHTS SPEND & TRENDS REPORT 2023
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