With all the emphasis these days that’s placed on collecting data, it’s possible for a business to lose sight of the need to turn the discoveries generated by analytic insights.
In a Forrester Research article authored by Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D., Forrester, the author defines insights services in this way:"Insights services combine internal and external data sourcing and advanced analytics to deliver actionable business insights that clients subscribe to and apply to specific functional or verticalbusiness use cases."
—Insights Services Disrupt The Data And Analytics Market
She goes on to describe the data value chain, with four major components:
- Data management: Collect and store
- Data governance: Clean and secure
- Data analytics: Discover and analyze
- Insights delivery: Act and automate
The research concludes that while companies invest in data management and governance, they too often neglect the last two components—understanding what the data say and acting on it.
We have first-hand experience with this phenomenon at Market Force. Brands spend a great deal of time and money ensuring their customer experience (CX) data has high integrity, is clean and well-secured, and can be properly accessed. However, brands too often choose to minimize their investment in analytics and insights—either using internal or external resources. This is a critical mistake.
When brands choose not to invest in proper analytics and change management tools, they create four critical challenges for their organization:
- Customers will assume that the brand is not listening to their perspective, resulting in an erosion of trust and good faith.
- The people who can drive change lack the information and tools to actually execute change. Scores will begin to stagnate.
- Given the lack of information, operators will assume or invent actions that they should take—and they may or may not be the right ones. Scores won’t change and they may consider their efforts futile or question the integrity of the data.
- Executives will begin to question their investment in CX data collection—and will inevitably cut the budget. What should have been a brand imperative will experience an untimely death.
This cycle occurs far too often. To ensure that your brand can leverage the ROI of its data investment, you must invest in data scientists and other analysts who can surface meaningful insights that can be translated into real actions with tangible ROI. Do not neglect this most important part of the data value chain. Instead, make this the bright line of excellence for your program.
LEARN MORE about Market Force's analytics and insights methodologies, and then schedule a briefing. We’d be glad to walk you through methods and proof points.
