INTERNAL INSIGHTS
For Xabier Palacio, an increasing array of companies are making the competitive landscape larger and more complex– and the insights function needs to feel empowered to help businesses – users and buyers of insights – wade into this new, complex reality. What I see in this survey is a very consistent picture. This is all part of the internalization of insights, where companies are finding it easier to integrate the function. Back in the day, only “the Coca-Colas of the world” could afford to have a big insights department. Nowadays, we see smaller companies having dedicated people, and that is being facilitated by lower costs and the increased availability of platforms. These companies are becoming part of the
new competitive landscape within the insights environment, even if there is still a bit of resistance from full-service agencies to recognize these newcomers. Those guys are competing for the same available budgets, and that is something we need to tackle and lift the veil. Particularly on expanding the influence on the business, I think the insights function needs to help businesses wade into a reality that is more complex and which has a higher impact of technological disruption. Reality is far more uncertain, and the impact of technology can be far more disruptive. In this context, clients essentially need to survive. They need to future-proof the business. In that sense, the role should move from descriptive to predictive or at least move into a far more empowered advisory role. In terms of biggest weaknesses , the “limited budget” finding also depends on how you define the function itself. The democratization of insights is lowering the cost of gathering data, which happens almost automatically nowadays. When you can already extract insights without so much cost, then you don’t need to allocate so many tools and resources. And I think that is also one element of what is lowering budgets there.
The lack of control over the activation of insights is the biggest weakness . We’ve
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INSIGHTS SPEND & TRENDS REPORT 2023
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