Organizations face a multitude of decisions every day. How to acquire new customers to achieve growth goals, how to hold on to the customers they have, how to respond to competitive threats, what new products or services to offer to stay on top, and so on.
At the heart of making these decisions are insights - reliable data, analyzed and served up in a consumable and timely way, that can help organizations make these decisions confidently and at the right time to drive the desired results.
But sometimes it can be hard for research and insights leaders to connect their programs to impact – especially when it comes time to justify budgets and headcount.
Here are a few tips on how you can connect your research and insights programs with demonstrable outcomes, so you can build an ROI story that lands with stakeholders:
As outlined in a previous blog post on getting stakeholders to listen to you, knowing your audience and ensuring your programs are connected with their goals is the first step. If you’ve structured programs in a way that aligns to key business results or strategic questions, it will be a lot easier to prove the impact down the road. Always ask - what decisions will be made with this data?
Stay connected with your stakeholders on how insights have led to key business outcomes:
Did an insight lead to a new revenue stream, such as a new product or service, or enhanced features that enabled the business to charge a higher price point? For example, Nectar used their insights program to identify a new product that is purchased by over 25% of their customers.
Did an insight lead to improvements in retention or repeat purchase, such as an improved support experience, or a new loyalty program?
Did an insight lead to improved acquisition rates or efficiency of marketing programs, such as improved messaging or revealing a new target audience? For example, The Good Chocolate used research insights to improve their advertising efforts and increased online revenue by 300% over 3 months.
Gather feedback from your stakeholders on how insights have made their jobs easier. Did these insights help them make decisions more quickly or confidently? How disappointed would they be if they did not have access to these insights? While not specifically business outcome data, having clear stakeholder support can be a very important factor in budget discussions, especially during planning season.
Similarly, gather feedback from your customers. How did the actions taken by the business impact your customers? Did their satisfaction or likelihood to purchase again improve? Did they start using the product or service more? This is valuable information for your stakeholders and it enables you to measure the impact of the decisions made using your program’s insights.
Reliable, timely, and ongoing insights are crucial to driving business success. With the right upfront planning, stakeholder management, and tools to support data analysis, research and insight leaders can clearly demonstrate the impact of their program on the business.
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Learn more how Beehive AI can help you deliver reliable, timely insights that connect to impact
Beehive AI provides a generative AI platform designed specifically for an organization’s unique qualitative data. With self-learning language models, validated by human experts, and built-in statistical analysis, research and insights leaders can quickly, accurately, and safely analyze their qualitative data, and combine it with quantitative data, to generate more robust customer insights.
Interested in learning more? Schedule a demo today.
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