Amid the merry-go-round of new objectives, targets and budget allocation that keep many a leader of an insight team busy, there is a question of “Who?” Who will do the work? That is probably accompanied by “how many people will there be in my team?” and “do they have the skills and motivation they need?” At first, this can all feel rather daunting. But it will be helped by, first, being clear on your goals. If you know what matters most and why, you're in a better place to make those ever tricky people decisions.
Staffing your team has more potential options than in years past, with more data, analytics and research agencies, consultancies and contractors. Determining which route to take requires some thought. In my conversations with leaders, it sounded like different businesses favored different resourcing models, but it was unclear which was most popular.
For that reason, we ran a survey among our readers about customer insight team resourcing models. Thanks to all of you who took part. The time has come to share those results.
First, we asked about how customer insight leaders currently resourced their four technical teams that make up holistic customer insight:
- Customer Data: For this team, as you can see, most leaders (67%) replied that all members of the team were employed by their company. The only alternative resourcing approach captured was a mixture of employed and contractors — but still all part of an in-house team. Perhaps it's the greater ease of recruiting these skills, or the sensitivity with regard to customer data, but this team doesn't appear to be a focus for outsourcing at the moment.
- Customer Analytics: For this team, there was a similar picture, with an even bigger majority of leaders (80%) stating that all the members of the team were employed by their company. Once again, the only other alternative captured was a mixture of employed and contractors as part of an in-house team. These results were perhaps more surprising, given the much-touted difficulty recruiting analysts or data scientists. Perhaps many businesses are still recruiting rounded analysts rather than the more limited pool of data science graduates. The result certainly flies in the face of advertising by many outsourcing analytics providers.
- Customer Research: Here, we began to see a slightly different picture. Only 50% of leaders replied with the most popular resourcing model thus far, that all the members of the team were employed by their company. The other half were split between outsourcing their research provision entirely and a mixture of both approaches. Sadly, this doesn't surprise me. I've found many a CMO or CEO who assumes that research is an ideal candidate for outsourcing and just asks the agency to “do more.” Sometimes, this is down to the internal team not demonstrating clearly enough the value they provide, so they are simply being perceived as “research buyers.”
- Database Marketing: Last, but definitely not least, is this commercially focused insight team. This category showed the most variation in resourcing models. More leaders (40%) still chose the most popular option; all the members of the team were employed by their company. But all the options we have seen so far were also used — contractors, outsourcing and a mixture of all of them. Given the more visible dependency that most businesses have on this team to hit income targets, I was slightly surprised by this.
- CEO preference: This reflects that CEOs value customer insight and view it as a potential competitive advantage, so the majority prefer all the members of the team to be employed by their company. There were also votes for use of contractors within in-house teams, a mixture of both and “no preference” (it depends on the team). This appears to be a continued opportunity for customer insight leaders to build on in 2016, to demonstrate to their CEOs that they offer that competitive advantage and are a key internal skills within their business.
- Your preference: So, we finally come to the resourcing model that customer insight leaders themselves favor. What has given them the best results, that they would prefer to have at their disposal to achieve 2016 targets? Well, based on votes, it would seem the answer is definitely in-house teams. 60% favor all the members of the team being employed by their company, with the other 40% voting for a mixture of employed and contractors making up this internal team. For what it's worth, that was my own experience, too. Growing your own talent internally worked best.
