Devoted to how insight is developed, shared and acted on
Save Time and Money - Look in the Larder
If you’ve been short of cash or had no time to go shopping, have you sometimes managed to conjure up a perfectly adequate meal by searching through your store cupboard, fridge and freezer?
If so (and even if not!), you can apply the same principles to insight requests.
What’s in your storehouse?
Every time you get a request, it can be all too easy just to trigger off a new project – almost without thinking. However, with a bit of time and thought, you may find that you already have a large proportion of the answers you need – they’re lurking somewhere in the work that you’ve carried out previously. When budgets are tight, it makes sense to review the insights that you’ve amassed from other projects.
But with a large volume of material to search through, how can you do this effectively?
Finding the right insights
Firstly, you need to know the key business issue that lies behind any request (rather than just focusing on the piece of information that you’re being asked for). This is always good practice, anyway – it helps you to ensure that you’re delivering insight rather than information.
Secondly, you also need an effective system of filing and retrieving all of your past work, so that you can find what you need easily and quickly.
So, rather than saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ when you get a request, take some time to identify the main business issue - and offer to check your existing sources before you commit yourself to commissioning new work.
Reaping the rewards
There are clear benefits to this approach – in terms of both time and cost. It will save money (which has to be a good thing in the current environment!) and you may be able to produce answers more quickly than you could by starting from scratch.
Some teams are finding themselves with budget cuts at the moment. This simple approach can be a really good way of providing value for the business during such challenging times. And if you’re not spending so much time in running new projects, it’s a good opportunity to get your house in order and to make sure that your library and archives are fit for purpose.
So, do you have up-to-date fact packs for key markets or key insight topics? If not, now could be a very good time to invest in this type of work.
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