Insight Horizons

Many Insight Leaders now realise that using their staff to shadow or even overlap with the work done by research suppliers is wasteful and has little to do with using information to find the best way to increase sales. They recognise that the real challenge or new agenda for Insight People lies in creating knowledge from information and translating this into better commercial marketing strategies.

Economic, competitive and channel changes have reshaped the focus and attention of many marketing people. They now have to make more decisions with less time to consider each. And this leads to a growing appetite for 'drive-thru data’, where decisions are based solely on easy, accessible or immediate facts rather than genuine knowledge and insight. Better use of knowledge requires that Insight People now need to step into two sets of shoes: one for the external customer, one for the stakeholders.
For many research people, however, this role lies outside their core skills and comfort zones, so they find it difficult to bridge this change. Also, as a result of these increasing pressures, they run the risk of becoming relegated purely to reactive, passive roles. The knowledge they hold remains locked in their department, never central to the strategic decision making of the organisation
An Insight Horizons programme from The ASHDOWN Group offers a way to lead staff across this bridge. The approach points Insight People away from acting as suppliers of information and towards the role of Pathfinder or strategic partner. It does this by helping them to develop an internal marketing perspective and to apply it to their work.

The workshops help develop Pathfinder skills in up to four main areas:

• Manage data into knowledge
• Engage proactively with stakeholders
• Communicate quickly and effectively to them
• Propose strategic initiatives

An ASHDOWN Insight Horizons workshop programme offers a series of interlinked modules to help insight people develop new perspectives, widen their outlook and sharpen their commercial input.