Transforming a global approach to consumer insights

As a research professional, there's nothing more inspiring than creating a consumer insights approach that gets to the heart of the data and works for your client and their stakeholders. With so many options in today's digital landscape and ever-increasing pressure from a time and cost standpoint, we are challenged daily to deliver insights that help businesses keep a competitive edge. Stories like this one can give us hope: a global company was able to transform a traditional approach to market research and, in its place, build a dynamic, interactive and customizable analysis and reporting system.

We're talking about Orange, a company doing business in the hyper-competitive telecommunications market across several global markets. When the company launched a strategic plan that put customers first, the market research team needed to get on board to engage their customers in constant conversation, to truly listen and act on their feedback.

"We were seeking simplicity, intuitiveness, and clearly displayed insights. We wanted to combine a great digital solution with a robust understanding of the importance of accurate data."

A careful evaluation of the challenges and barriers to success found themes that many companies face today: tightening budgets, slow data processing, and delivery, inefficient sharing across multiple stakeholders, and an inability to interact with and explore the data for deep understanding. These, along with the geographical and cultural challenges of working in multiple countries, meant the market research team had their work cut out for them.

Russell King, Director of Group Brand & Customer Experience Research at Orange, said, "We were seeking simplicity, intuitiveness, and clearly displayed insights. We wanted to combine a great digital solution with a robust understanding of the importance of accurate data."

To solve these issues, Orange teamed up with Infotools to create a platform, built-in Harmoni, and known as the Power Station. Far beyond a simple online reporting tool or dashboard creator, this solution:

• Brings together the data from two different research programs, carried out by two different suppliers, and lets users explore all the data in one place.
• Enables users—even non-technical ones—to explore the data and identify and visualize patterns and trends themselves without always having to rely on experts.
• Gives users access to pre-built reports, but also empowers them to dig deeper into the data sets and create their own reports and dashboards, including the ability to add commentary to create their personal stories. Users can export and share these stories via direct platform links or PowerPoint templates.
• Quickly updates reports and dashboards as soon as a new data wave is loaded.

King continued, "Orange stakeholders now have simple and intuitive access to current research as well as all the updates, allowing them to build and share stories easily. It has promoted better conversations across the company and enabled decision-making that is truly customer-oriented. At the same time, our data analysts can still explore, in detail, answers to any question they are asked."

"The changes we've made have significantly increased the value we're delivering to the business. We're contributing at a strategic level and playing a key role in important research decisions. It's what every research team is ultimately trying to do, isn't it?"

Ultimately the new Power Station solution has helped Orange to address all its up-front challenges head-on. It gives the company a competitive advantage by providing instant access to updated consumer insights. Stakeholders can now get immediate answers to questions, enabling them to make strategic business decisions that deliver high-value, high-quality, and highly personalized experiences to all customers at every interaction. This has significantly increased the value of this information across the whole of Orange's business.

King said, "The changes we've made have significantly increased the value we're delivering to the business. We're contributing at a strategic level and playing a key role in important research decisions. It's what every research team is ultimately trying to do, isn't it?"

Check out the in-depth case study for the complete story on how Orange transformed its approach to consumer insights.

Download the Case Study