Turning Market Data into Effective Insight

Companies often have a plethora of market information at their disposal.  But whilst information on competitors, market performance, customer behaviour and macro trends can be plentiful, they don’t always result in true insight that can be used by employees throughout the business to make informed decisions?

Market-informed decision making shouldn’t just be the preserve of executives. It can help influence impactful decision making across middle management, front-line team leads and individual contributors.

When does market data not translate into true market environment insight?

Having access to the market data is always a key component, but having the information won’t result in performance benefits on its own.  Market data can lack impact if:

• It’s only updated as part of an annual cycle

• Information isn’t widely shared

• Only a small group of people are involved in the process

• … and ultimately if experts around the business aren’t engaged in the process to distil business relevant risks and impacts from the underlying data.
  

Getting it right means bringing in people from around the business, gathering a diverse set of opinions, encouraging peer review and disseminating information as part of a regular routine throughout the business.  The objective should be an employee population that has a strong feel for activity in the market when making decisions at every level.

A strong view of the environment should always be multifaceted, covering competitors, macro trends, customer behaviour, and market dynamics. 

Competitors

Pitfalls	What good looks like
Are the right competitors on your radar?  Just looking at traditional competitors risks losing sight of the threat from new entrants and InsurTechs. Is depth of insight sufficient?  Public accounts and reporting provide a bedrock but often lacks detail.	A good view of public data, but one that’s augmented by information from your externally facing employees.  That could be sales & marketing people, PR teams and distribution managers.  The nature of this insight is rarely quantitative and needs to be carefully reviewed but can be used as reference data for important insight into you company’s relative position in the market.

Macro trends

Pitfalls

What good looks like

Relying solely on generic, ‘top 10’ type views on macro trends from public sources and market commentators

Firstly, filtering prevailing trends for the ones matched to your business, markets and customer groups.  Secondly, judging filtered trends based on a) level of relevance and impact to your business and b) the timelines under which impact could be felt.  Is it a threat or opportunity that could emerge this year, during the plan period or further out?  Will it support, hinder or fully disrupt your business model if the trend develops?

Customer behaviour

Pitfalls	What good looks like
Issues arise from relying on old, out of date information, but also from being too general with customer segmentation.  Who are your target customers and what are their characteristics?  How does this differ from other groups?  Relying on the behaviours of a broader, super-set of customers will miss the nuances present in your specific, target customer group.	Fresh insight directly from current and future customers.  Online or telephony surveys can unearth information beyond the publicly available reports and can be tailored to target your specific customer groups.  Workshops with groups of customers to test product and brand fit can take things further and give unique levels of insight into strategic planning considerations.

Market dynamics

Pitfalls

What good looks like

Getting good data on product performance across the market is always step one, but having charts showing premium and customer numbers with growth rates only tells a fraction of the story.

Not just what happened in the market but, critically, why.  The real value in gathering information about market performance comes from understanding the underlying drivers for the data.  Without this, forecasts become spurious.  Only by understanding what’s moved the market looking back and then comparing with information on prevailing trends and customer behaviour can a useful forecast for market performance be deduced.

The ultimate objective is to have a volume of market insight information that informs and alters the direction of your business.  Is the information that you’re tracking engaged with throughout the organisation? Not just as part of an annual cycle but on a day-to-day basis?

At its best, market insight outputs should connect with every part of the business, have wide-spread circulation and involvement.  Everyone should be armed with this knowledge in a manner that influences the decisions that are taken at all levels.

We can help you to build market insight to enhance strategic planning

Camelot’s Strategy experts have extensive strategic planning experience, bringing market insight to life in the insurance sector.  We can help you to design processes and behaviours that bring market insight in your organisation to the next level. Our experienced experts use cross-sector insurance knowledge to offer a range of services to take insight to the next level:

• Rapid insight effectiveness assessment and diagnostics

• Review of the annual strategic planning process

• Design of new processes and activity to draw on external data sources and make the most of internal expertise

Please get in touch to discuss how we can work with you and take the next steps.  We pride ourselves on the flexibility of our model – we always look for a solution and a way of working that’s tailored to each client’s needs.

About the author

Chris Hazell has spent 20 years in the insurance industry advising business leaders, executives and Boards at major insurers.  Chris has led internal strategy and corporate development teams in the insurance industry and worked as an external consult.