Agile ways working have been a hot topic for some time, and with good reason. It’s a way of working that speeds up time-consuming tasks and focuses on maximizing efficiency. While agility is of course applicable to all industries, this way of working has especially risen in popularity in the world of market research, paving the way to agile insights.
Table of Contents:
- What are agile insights?
- How can teams benefit from agile insights?
- Fundamentals of agile insights
- Build an agile research program with quantilope
What are agile insights?
Agile insights are consumer feedback metrics that researchers can gather quickly and efficiently to guide decision-making within their organization. This might involve feedback around a new product concept, a new initiative, or ideas on how to improve an existing offer.
Agile insights can be iteratively woven into ongoing consumer insights work within an organization. Instead of commissioning a specific or niche research project that might take several weeks to set up, conduct, and debrief, an agile insights project is designed to adapt to new information and changing needs as they arise.
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How can teams benefit from agile insights?
Agile insights help businesses stay nimble and responsive to dynamic markets. Consumers can quickly change their views for a variety of reasons, and external influences play a large part. Social media and instant access to news means trends and opinions change faster than ever. Marketing and market research teams need to move just as fast to make sure their insights are up to speed - especially amidst widespread events like inflation, 'shrinkflation', or supply chain issues that can heavily impact consumers' purchasing decisions. This is where agile research is key.
Teams that leverage agile insights benefit from the following:
A better understanding of what customers think
Traditional research agencies conduct insights projects over a set period of time, with lengthy turnaround times and firm start/end dates. Agile insights, on the other hand, capture consumer insights in real time. Businesses that undergo an 'agile transformation' – moving their traditional research project to an agile platform, can capture subtleties of changing customer views and alter research questions at any time. This way of working paves the way for actionable and highly relevant insights.
More insights in less time
Because the agile insights process is an iterative and reactive one, brands can run more frequent and more streamlined surveys rather than trying to pack everything into one long research study. This can drastically reduce project management, fieldwork duration, and reporting efforts. Not to mention, shorter studies are advantageous from a respondent point of view too - reducing the risk of respondent fatigue and poor quality data.
Improved decision-making through frequent testing
Most importantly, real-time/current findings means better-informed business decisions. With an agile approach, research teams don't have to worry that their insights will be outdated by the time of a project’s debrief. Agile insights provide feedback that is both timely and pertinent to current issues so that businesses can make the most of consumer insights as they arise.
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Fundamentals of agile insights
Agile insights are all about prioritizing speed and efficiency to quickly gather and act on customer feedback. This means using streamlined methods and tools to collect consumer metrics, rapidly analyze data, and adapt products and services as needed. This iterative approach to consumer insights allows for continuous learning and improvement.
Below are some fundamentals to keep in mind when leveraging an agile research approach:
Incorporate customer feedback into each stage of the development cycle
Agile insights work because they are both business-driven and consumer-driven. How often do you have a great idea for a new concept when research is already underway - or one of the survey respondents comes up with a great insight yet there’s no way to change your stimulus to reflect it? With agile insights, consumer feedback happens in tandem with business processes so that those valuable points of insight can be fed back into the research for testing.
Focus on efficiency
Agile insight tools are well-suited for the demands of flexible, adaptive research. They are easy to control and can handle quick, even last-minute, changes in surveys if needed.
Agile insight tools are often cost-efficient as well. Not only do agile insight platforms save budget compared to larger, more traditional agencies - they also save valuable time. Research teams can quickly populate a survey, avoiding back and forth changes leading to version control issues, and thus accelerating the time to insights.
Share insights across teams
One of the great benefits of agile insights is the opportunity for cross-team collaboration. Using agile insight platforms, teams can share data points and insights across departments, gather suggestions, and implement feedback in very little time. In this way, the voices of all involved teams and stakeholders are represented in a final deliverable - minimizing the rounds of edits required before taking action.
Be ready to adapt to changes
With agile insights, there’s no sitting around waiting for research findings to be delivered. Insights could be delivered as often as daily, so businesses need to be ready to act on them. This requires a certain level of organization, with processes in place to digest insights and react appropriately. It also means the value of research is maximized as real-time learning can be directed towards quick changes in business strategy, keeping brands ahead of the competition.
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Build an agile research program with quantilope
quantilope’s Insights Automation Platform is perfectly designed for agile market research. Its intuitive functionality means it can be used by any business team, with an agile project set up in a matter of hours. The easy-to-use interface means that with a few clicks of your mouse you can select your sample, enter your research questions, and choose the methodologies most suited to the analysis you would like to carry out.
quantilope’s online research platform is fully automated, so you can truly sit back and wait for responses to start rolling in. Once they do, you will get an early read on consumer perceptions before field is even finalized, allowing you to make changes to the research or your strategy as needed. quantilope’s advanced methods - including a library of 13 pre-programmed quantitative methodologies ensure your insights team will always gather high-quality data.
Agile insights are all about efficiency and applying data as quickly as possible to the business issue in question. With quantilope’s tools for gathering consumer feedback, your insights teams will no longer feel bogged down trying to figure out what all the data means. quantilope’s automated charting tool generates real-time results in customizable charts, all of which can be added to a final dashboard for all your insights in one place.
To learn more about quantilope's agile insights process, get in touch below:
