Introducing the Connected Insights Framework

Welcome to Ryan’s Rant, my weekly newsletter aimed at helping companies drive customer-centric growth.

I've spent my entire career helping make consumers more accessible to brands because I believe that customer-centric businesses win. 

I believe that if your consumer data is connected, you have a competitive advantage. It’s why I joined Zappi so many years ago — because everything we do at Zappi follows that vision. 

We aspire to be the data platform that brands around the world rely on to inspire, optimize and validate their decisions.

Why? Because consumer-centric companies grow.

If you want to grow your brand, drive creative effectiveness and land successful innovation, you need to understand your consumer. You need to put the consumer at the center of your decision making. 

Technology today has enabled us to be more customer centric than ever before. But it requires connected data to allow for true consumer centricity. And most companies haven't connected their insights yet.

The Connected Insights Framework

At Zappi, we’re not only providing the innovative technology insights teams need to deliver connected insights, we’re also working with them to deliver a true transformation and achieve consumer centricity. 

In the last decade we’ve spent on this journey, we’ve learned a lot about insights teams in different stages of that transformation. 

We’ve consolidated what we’ve learned into the Connected Insights Framework.

We created the Connected Insights Framework to help teams understand where they fall in that journey. When they know where they are, they can better understand what they need to do to make it to that transformational state. 

And no matter where you fall in the journey, there are steps you can take to improve.

This is a brief overview of the framework. 

Stage 1: Disconnected

This is the level I’d estimate about 80% of insights departments are stuck at. 

At this stage, insights teams are viewed as order-takers. They work project by project — led by the demands of other departments. They often rely on agencies to do research for them. There is no continuity across projects and therefore they can’t connect learnings from one project to another.

As a result, their influence and impact are limited. Senior executives don’t give them much thought.

If this is where you’re at, start being intentional with how you approach research. Start standardizing across projects. Invest in technology that lets you automate certain tasks and enable basic defaults you can keep consistent across projects. 

This will make your data work harder for you, because it will be comparable across projects.  

Stage 2: Fragmented

When insights teams progress to stage 2, they begin to connect one project to another, or perhaps one team or brand or country to another. But they don’t connect all their data and research systematically. 

For example, maybe they've cracked the code to research systematically across one region, but data isn't harmonized throughout the broader global portfolio. Or they’ve connected their advertising research, but all other research remains fragmented. 

As a result, they cannot influence strategy or rise to the level of executive-level visibility.

If you’re at this level, I suggest doing a full audit on how research is done throughout your organization. Look at what’s connected and what’s not, who’s collaborating and who’s not. Identify the problems to be solved and work toward getting buy in to solve those problems. 

This isn’t an easy chasm to cross as there is a lot of work to do to connect insights fully on a global level. I recommend subscribing to my podcast where insights leaders share the ways they’re going about connecting insights. 

Stage 3: Connected

Only a small number of insights teams fall under stage 3. It takes years to get there, but it should be the dream of all insights departments. 

A few of the key features of a stage 3 team: 

• They’re seen as strategic and trusted advisors

• They share research through the whole organization, promoting collaboration and allowing for consumer centricity

• They’re connected across projects, brands and geographies

• They tie together various phases of creative and development processes seamlessly

• They make more intelligent predictions using centralized and connected data repositories

• They manage larger budgets

• They regularly share their perspectives on important trends

• Their leaders often have executive roles reporting directly to a C-level executive, like the CMO

• They’re an integral part of the business decision-making process — seen as world-class thought leaders rather than as project managers

Essentially, when consumer insights are fully connected, they are integral to the company’s decision-making and contribute to its competitive edge. 

Where are you today?

Which level do you think your team is at? And what are you doing to move up? 

We’ll have a book out on this subject in just a few months that will offer tangible steps on how to move from stage 1 to stage 3 (I’ll share it in this newsletter when it’s ready!) but here’s a sneak peek at the framework we’re including in the book. 

Explore it to figure out where you fit. And let me know in the comments!