Read about why the Invest in Insights Handbook is needed, the objectives being set, and why you need to care about demonstrating the business value of Insights.
Why the Handbook is Needed
As more and more companies adopt customer-centric strategies there is a growing demand for data and insights on customers and consumers. No longer is it only marketing, which is an important customer for the Insights team, but more and more business functions, including the C-suite, are needing the outputs the Insights team produces. At the same time, many Insights functions are having their budgets cut, forcing them into a downward spiral of having to produce more and more for less and less.
Our Objectives
Our core objective is simple: For Insights to be seen as an investment, and not an expense, so that Insights team can demand increased budgets to cope with this growing demand, and to enable Insights to become the fuel that truly drives customer-centric growth. We have high expectations for this Handbook and are setting high targets:
  1. To have at least 200 insights teams use this Handbook in 2018 to create their own ROI of Insights Report for the senior management in their company
  2. By 2020, to double the number of insights teams, from 20 to 40%*, which are perceived within their companies to be strategic insights partners or a source of competitive advantage
How We Will Achieve these Objectives
The Handbook presents both a framework and a template, which will help Insights leaders implement a process for measuring their business impact and their ROI. Unfortunately, it does not offer a simple “one glove fits all” solution, since the Insights leaders will need to build their own process based upon existing tools and processes within their organizations, as well as take into account the organizational and culture peculiarities of their company. The Handbook should be seen as a guide, from which Insights leaders can pick the ideas which are a good fit for them and their company, and ignore the things that don’t fit. This is the first ever publicly available Handbook of its kind and we are the first to admit that it is far from perfect, but is a start and hopefully a catalyst for action. We hope that many Heads of Insights functions across the globe will use this Handbook to measure the return on investment they are giving the business in order to demonstrate their business impact, and in order to demand more budget and more headcount.

“Business impact: It is by far, the largest determinant of whether you are a top performer or a bottom performer in the CI team. Being able to demonstrate ROI or business impact is critically important.” – Head of Insights, Health & Wellness

Why You Need to Care?
Over the last 2 years, we have had the pleasure of talking to many Insights leaders. Most are currently not under any external pressure to measure their ROI, although quite a few have the need to at least present a business case when asking for additional budget for investing in new types of research or tools. Many Insights Leaders said that because they have a good reputation in their organization, they don’t feel internal pressure to measure their ROI either. We believe, however, that there is a strong argument to be made for taking a proactive approach to ROI and business impact measurement. Firstly, when we dug a little deeper in those conversations, most of the leaders told us that either their budgets have been cut over the last few years and/or there is a serious threat of having their budgets cut moving forward. Should a budget cut loom, having a ROI of Insights report at hand to defend the Insights budget is likely to be a useful document, even more so if the CFO is already aware of the document and helped in its creation. It is important to remember that Insights is just one of many functions competing for the same budget and if that pot decreases then competition between functions intensifies. We would argue those functions which have a strong ROI-based defense argument are better placed than others to win this game. Secondly, the trust reputation is built on relationships, which intrinsically isn’t a bad thing, but in today’s world people are more and more likely to change positions/companies. All it takes is a new CEO/CFO/CMO who demands a more metrics-based reporting/budget allocation process and that reputation might be worth next to nothing. Yes, build relationships. Yes, build trusted advisor status. Back it up with a structured ROI and business impact assessment, though. Finally, we believe that improving the ability to measure ROI and demonstrate business value will help further the careers of client-side Insights professionals, not only within their organizations but within the job market more broadly, which isn’t a bad thing either. The Invest in Insights Handbook will help Insights leaders get started with, or improve, the measurement of the value they bring to the table.   * Source: BCG, Yale CCI, and Cambiar 2015 Consumer Insights Benchmarking Study