What today’s best insights teams have in common

You’re watching the clock for your next meeting when someone asks, “Can we get some quick data on this?” This question is more about confidence than research. 

Decisions are happening faster, and the cost of getting them wrong is higher. Teams want insight early enough to change outcomes, not just explain them after the fact.

In this article, I’ll break down how the role of insights teams is changing and what the best teams are doing differently to stay influential as expectations rise.

Today’s market research isn’t just faster than before; the role has fundamentally changed.

From project executors to strategic partners

At one time, market research teams came in at the end of the process. The role involved testing concepts, validating ads and confirming plans.  

That model no longer holds. 

Today’s insights teams are expected to shape decisions, and not just document outcomes. AI is accelerating this shift. AI tools deliver faster analysis, automation and integrated platforms, which means insights can show up earlier. 

Instead of reacting to requests, modern research teams increasingly influence the questions being asked. They’re pulled in earlier to help teams weigh options, identify what to test next and adjust as needed. The addition of AI doesn’t replace human judgment. It gives greater visibility where insights can have a real impact by freeing up time for insights teams to focus on the bigger picture.

This shift shows up across the industry. In a 2024 retrospective on the state of the insights industry, Insights Association described the field as firmly entering the “AI Era,” marked by both opportunity and disruption. Industry leaders emphasized that while AI is reshaping speed and scale, relevance still depends on data quality, interpretation and the ability to connect insights to business decisions.

Why demand for insights is growing across the business

Creative, product and marketing teams are under pressure to move faster. Yet, speed means more risk. 

As a result, more teams are asking for data to reduce uncertainty without slowing momentum. They want answers in days, not weeks. And they want insights that are easy to apply, not buried in long reports.

At the same time, organizations are becoming more cross-functional. Creative choices affect product adoption. Product decisions affect both brand perception and marketing performance. 

That interdependence increases demand for insights that can travel across teams. It also raises expectations on research teams to deliver clarity that holds up in multiple contexts, not just within a single function.

Takeaway: Modern market research teams don’t just support decisions. They enable better decisions earlier, across more teams, with less friction.

That shift in expectations has consequences. To meet them, high-performing insights teams are built differently. When insights teams struggle to scale, the issue is rarely talent or even a lack of headcount. Instead, it’s structural. When you update your workflow, your team learns faster.

Clear roles across insights, analytics and strategy

High-performing consumer insights organizations don’t rely on one generalist to do everything. Instead, they define roles clearly and assign ownership based on work, not job titles. 

You’ll often see a mix of:

• Researchers focused on study design and methodology

• Analysts translating data into patterns and implications

• Insights operations specialists managing scale, speed and consistency

• Strategic leaders connecting findings to business decisions

These roles require clarity. One person can do more than one, but they need to be clear on which hat they’re wearing and why. 

Without that clarity, teams bottleneck fast and strategic thinking gets crowded out by execution. Then, insights arrive too late to shape decisions. 

Teams that move fastest aren’t doing more work. They’ve designed workflows that blend qualitative depth, quantitative rigor and behavioral signals without creating friction. 

Always-on learning instead of one-off projects

Instead of treating research as a series of isolated projects, modern teams operate in learning loops.

They test ideas and compile learnings at multiple stages of creative and product development: 

•  Early concepts

•  Rough cuts

•  Final executions

•  Post-launch learnings

Over time, teams start noticing what keeps repeating, so they can build on it. 

As Lucy Davison, founder of Keen as Mustard, noted in a 2024 industry reflection: 

“Insight functions today are more strategically integrated into decision-making than in the past. It also has higher satisfaction and ROI because teams can communicate value clearly and reuse what they learn across the business.”

But integration only works when learnings can be reused. 

Centralized frameworks that ensure consistency

As research scales, inconsistencies can add up fast. You need shared metrics to know what “good” looks like. 

These shared frameworks help anchor decisions: 

• Common KPIs and scoring systems

• Standardized templates for briefs and outputs

• Clear testing standards that apply globally

Without shared standards, results drift. With them, teams can actually compare work across markets and trust what they’re seeing.

Takeaway: High-performing insights teams aren’t defined by talent or working harder. They scale by clarifying ownership, reusing learning and standardizing what matters. That way, there’s a process for insights, and they stay sharp.

Technology by itself doesn’t make things better. But when it reduces friction and improves rigor, it can make a positive difference. 

Automation for operational efficiency

For high-performing insights teams, automation isn’t about doing more research faster at any cost. It’s about standardizing the process components.

Study setup, sample management and repeatable workflows are where automation earns its keep. Because it reduces manual lift and teams shorten timelines without cutting corners.

The payoff isn’t speed for its own sake. It’s reclaimed time. Time to interrogate results, pressure-test assumptions and focus on interpretation instead of execution.

Automation works best when it standardizes how research runs, not how insights are formed.

Platforms that integrate multiple methods into one workflow

Modern insights teams have plenty of data. The problem is the data is fragmented across silos. 

When concept testing lives in one place with ad testing somewhere else you get duplicated work and inconsistent metrics. 

Integrated platforms reduce those handoffs. They create a shared environment where different methods can coexist within consistent frameworks. Teams still choose the right approach for the question, but results are easier to compare, reuse and defend.

Integration shouldn’t dictate methodology. It should reduce friction between methods.

Enabling more experimentation and iteration

When testing becomes faster and more affordable, teams experiment more. And that can mean more noise. 

That’s where structure comes into play. Shared KPIs, benchmarks and scoring systems turn repeated testing into cumulative learning.

Teams can test and experiment consistently using consistent metrics. This makes for faster learning. 

Takeaway: Technology doesn’t replace insight. It creates capacity by removing friction, reinforcing consistency and making learning easier to reuse so that insights teams can focus on judgment, not logistics.

Once teams have the proper structure and operating model, the next constraint is execution. That’s where tools either add friction or quietly remove it.

A unified insights ecosystem built for scale

Zappi supports some of the world’s largest consumer brands, including PepsiCo, Unilever and Mars, which operate across markets, categories and creative teams.

These organizations face a common challenge: Running high volumes of research without losing consistency. Zappi addresses this by providing shared methodologies, benchmarks and scoring systems that enable results to be compared across regions and teams.

Zappi is designed around a simple premise: Insights scale best when teams don’t have to reinvent the process every time.

Zappi provides a unified environment where studies are run using consistent methodologies. That consistency makes it easier to compare results across campaigns, markets and time — without forcing teams into a single way of working.

For insights leaders, this solves a familiar problem: Results that can be trusted internally because they’re grounded in the same standards, even when different teams are involved.

That structure helps insights teams move beyond individual results and into a strategic, connected perspective.

For instance, a global insights team can use the same scoring framework for ad testing across regions, while local teams are able to retain flexibility in creative direction, all while leadership gets a comparable view of performance worldwide.

Automated testing that speeds up decision-making

Zappi is designed to remove operational friction from research execution — allowing insights to surface earlier, when ideas are still forming.

Global brands have publicly emphasized the importance of scalable, effectiveness-driven marketing. Platforms like Zappi enable this by automating setup and execution, as well as providing a platform for continuous learning, so teams can iterate without restarting the process each time.

With Zappi, studies run in hours, not weeks. Such speed changes how teams work, as testing becomes part of the creative and product process rather than a final checkpoint. This means iteration becomes possible at every stage, from early ideas to final executions.

Empowering insights teams to guide creative and product decisions

For insights leaders, speed alone isn’t enough. Influence depends on credibility. And that means leaders need shared benchmarks and standardized metrics. 

Using a connected insights platform like Zappi allows brands to see which elements from current and previous ads or concepts have resonated with consumers, based on their own data. This empowers insights teams to be able to credibly speak to what works and what doesn’t with their audience with confidence, as these recommendations come directly from the brand’s past learnings. 

The role of insights teams hasn’t expanded because organizations suddenly value research more.

It’s expanded because decisions are harder, timelines are tighter and the cost of guessing is higher. Useful insights need to be timely. 

The teams that stay influential are the ones that remove friction from how insight is generated, shared and reused. 

That’s where platforms like Zappi fit. Not as a replacement for judgment, but as an operating layer that helps insights show up earlier, travel further and hold together across teams.

When that happens, research stops being a checkpoint at the end of the process. It becomes part of how decisions get made in the first place.