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Incorporating Insight Into Induction

Do you sometimes feel that your internal clients don’t make full use of your Insight team? Do they seem to forget that you’re there; involve you in projects too late; make unreasonable requests; or even treat your team as ‘lowly’ back room people? If so, you’re not alone!
 
Insight teams would ideally like to be highly respected, involved early, and treated as partners – not servants. One way of achieving this is to make sure that your team is involved in any induction sessions that your company might run. With the ever increasing mobility of staff, this is becoming an even more essential requirement. It will both raise awareness of the insight role and also show potential users what is possible (which in turn will manage their expectations and help them in providing clearer requests).
 
Other tips include: 
  • Keep an eye out for new people – Introduce yourself informally to new people in roles that should interface well with your Insight team.
  • Develop an insight credentials brochure – This should outline what you do; what information is available and how to access it; and key names and contact details.
  • Ensure that any induction material is followed up – You will need to offer further training and information, particularly for key insight users. This could typically include:
    • A Masterclass programme of Insight days or seminars – looking at the market, consumer trends and specific brands, perhaps for half a day, with guest speakers and compulsory attendance for marketing team members!
    • Visits to observe fieldwork or target market consumers - These will help your marketing colleagues to experience the research process and the real world, so that they become more realistic in their research requests.
    • Regular Marketing and Insight meetings – to share experience, skills and best practices.
    • Other awareness exercises – e.g. Brand Planning Days; insight guides for internal circulation; insight articles in internal newsletters etc.

 The benefits of greater awareness

Introducing insight at an early stage (and then reinforcing awareness) helps to: 
  • Establish the ground rules – for example, the need to involve you at an earlier stage. Show them that you can add much more value if you understand the business issues, rather than simply providing a research and information service. Promote your team as a proactive business partner, rather than a research or information provider.
  • Enhance planning – as you are able to encourage colleagues to reduce the number of late and impractical requests for pieces of work. If they are aware of the practicalities of fieldwork, they should be less likely to demand over-complicated questionnaires (and to keep adding to the project brief after it has been delivered).
  • Improve understanding – that quality can be damaged by rushed or badly managed projects.
  • List previous work - If new people know what has been done already (and where to find it) there is no need to keep reinventing the wheel.
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