360 Degree Insight - By Rob Murray

“360 degree insight” was the phrase on many people’s lips at this year’s MRS conference. The highly conservative market research industry risks playing catch up as clients see the opportunity in driving insight out of the various data sources that they have access to. It is easy to talk about 360 degree insight, but hard to deliver it.

In our view the traditional model of the market research agency needs to move on. The notion that the only way to get insight is to carry out fresh qualitative or quantitative fieldwork seems not only misguided, but also slightly arrogant to many clients, who see the untapped potential in their other data sources.

As agencies we need to develop new skills and be data source neutral. We need to learn how to develop hypotheses and ask questions of unstructured data. This is a different skill set to the old world where our fieldwork was neatly structured by our own questionnaires and discussion guides.

We also need to change our capability – serious data analysis needs to be a core competence, not something that is outsourced on tricky quant projects. We need to have access to leading technology which can easily bring client data together and sift out what really matters.

But the real trick is to not go too far. Many of the data types which define our new world are heavy on the “what” but light on the “why”. If we are to genuinely help our clients make the right decisions, the sweet spot will be an ability to see the wood from the trees in big data, using clever analysis skills, blended with our traditional skill in understanding why things are happening, all supported by the right technology.

As a famous car manufacturer recently said in it’s TV ads, the best way to predict the future is to create it. That is why Nutshell sits firmly at the forefront of 360 degree insight and why our team is big on action, low on words.