“Big Insights” in the Services Revolution

I have been invited by ESOMAR and IE to share some thoughts on Decision Making based on Market Research. It is a good opportunity to forecast about the changes some business decision support units are having within the “Services Revolution” going on.

The key about the changes in the Services industries in the digital era is a true customer-centric focus. That way, companies must listen & understand us, the people, whether customer, non-customer, consumers, etc. The digital tools allows consumer to communicate directly with companies, and vice versa. And also to deliver relevant insights in a quicker way that the traditional research of 20^th Century.

Analytic also add to these consumer insights efforts. Despite the buzz around “Big Data”, it seems this is not enough for the challenge of the new consumer (see Forbes update on BigData). In order to fulfill the requirements of the business development, it may seem better to combine both worlds, Big Data (fact based) + Consumer Insights (inspirational) in order to have a more accurate/ 360º picture of the customer: “Big Insights”.  That way, companies must listen & understand us, the people, whether customer, non-customer, consumers, etc. The digital tools allows consumer to communicate directly with companies, and vice versa. And also to deliver relevant insights in a quicker way that the traditional research of 20^th Century.

The future would require the companies to have the Consumer Insights focus of Procter & Gamble +  the analytic mindset of Capital One. Below an example of the top management role of customer analytic in this U.S. credit card leader.

Of course the challenge is having the right multidisciplinary talent, combining capabilities from different sciences: Sociology, Psychology, Ethnography, Mathematics, Statistics, Data Science, Computer Engineering, Marketing, Business, etc. All these opportunities for companies are also threats for both companies and vendors that don’t catch up with the new paradigm.

To highlight: opportunities combining research tools, with on-line capabilities and big data analytic fact-based.