What are Insights?
Insights are a deeper understanding of a particular situation or phenomenon. They can be derived from data, research, or experience and provide new perspectives or reveal previously hidden information.
Insights are essential because they help inform decision-making and strategy, identify opportunities, and solve problems. They can also help organizations stay competitive by better understanding customers, markets, and trends. Additionally, insights can lead to innovation and new product development.
In the business context, insights are often used to inform marketing and sales strategy, customer experience design, product development, and other areas that can directly impact a company’s bottom line. So, insights are essential for any organization that wants to stay competitive and grow in a fast-paced business environment.
As digital transformation accelerates, so does the need for more detailed, profound, and compelling insights. Insights are the cornerstone of the digital economy. They’re a catalyst for creating new value and a path to competitive advantage.
How valuable are insights?
In short, insights are observations over time. The longer the period, and the more words, the more insights you will gain. Insights are created from an intense investigation based on observation, intuition, and synthesis of several themes and challenges. Well, for starters:
- Investors invest in companies that create insights that buyers are looking for.
- Executives rely on wisdom to forecast the future and chart a course to achieve their vision.
- Leaders look for understanding to navigate the complexity of change, and
- People embrace insights to put them into action, confront their biases, and create something new.
Most of the knowledge created today is lost in translation or overcome by the noise of ever-increasing amounts of data. As a result, there is growing concern for lack of insight, with companies grappling with an “illusion of knowledge” while drowning in data and failing to turn information into intelligence.
Why Insight?
For starters, most’ new insights’ are nothing more than observations. Often, what is new is merely seen or shared, with people noticing outliers, not trends. While words are essential, they mean nothing without action.
FACT: Data is not an insight
Data is not an insight because it is raw information that has not been analyzed or interpreted. Data is simply a collection of facts or figures. It may be helpful, but doesn’t provide any deeper understanding or meaning.
On the other hand, insight is a deep understanding or revelation derived from analyzing and interpreting data. It is a conclusion or understanding that goes beyond the raw data.
For example, a data point that shows a particular product is selling well is not an insight. An insight would understand why that product is selling well, such as identifying the specific features resonating with customers.
Data is an essential building block to form an insight, but it’s not the final result. An insight requires additional context, analysis, and interpretation to identify patterns, trends, and causes, which can help make decisions, solve problems, and identify opportunities.
Data can take many forms, but we must remember it is just that — data. A singular data point can drive a swift conclusion, which is not good. Alone, data is not an insight, and it does not think for you. With petabytes of data generated weekly at most companies, leaders’ fundamental problem is more strategic. “How do we mine and analyze data to reveal insights we can act on?”
Read: The 5 Best Sales Prospecting Techniques
FACT: An observation is not an insight
An observation is not an insight because it is simply a description of something that has been noticed or perceived rather than an understanding or revelation derived from that observation.
An observation can be a fact or information gathered through the senses, such as seeing, hearing, or measuring. For example, an observation might be that a certain product is popular among a specific demographic or that a particular behavior is occurring in a certain situation.
On the other hand, insight is a more profound understanding or revelation derived from analyzing and interpreting observations. It is a conclusion or understanding that goes beyond the raw observation and helps to provide a deeper understanding of the underlying causes and patterns.
For example, an observation that a particular product is popular among a certain demographic is not an insight. Still, an insight would help understand why that product is particularly appealing to that demographic, such as identifying the specific features or benefits that resonate with them.
Observations are vital as they provide raw data, but it is not the final result. An insight requires additional context, analysis, and interpretation to identify patterns, trends, and causes, which can help make decisions, solve problems, and identify opportunities.
The power of observation is a significant part of creating new insight. After all, if you don’t notice what’s essential, opportunities will pass you by. Observations are facts, but they still lack the “why,” “motivation,” or “direction” that leads to solid decision-making.
FACT: HOPE IS NOT AN INSIGHT
- An insight is not an aspiration or a wish. These desires may work well to define features and benefits, but hope is not a strategy for creating shared understanding. Moreover, hope does not lead to insights that have the gravity to change direction or enroll teams to act in new ways. And let’s face it: there can be no results without action.
- The ever-increasing explosion of data puts more and more knowledge at your fingertips than ever before. But that knowledge is only helpful if you know it’s there and what to do with it.
- Every millisecond of every day, data becomes information. Information becomes knowledge. And knowledge becomes insight.
- The answer to many of today’s business challenges is all around you. So how will you cut through the noise, overcome blind spots, and remove barriers to innovation and growth when you can’t see them?
IT’S IMPORTANT TO TURN DATA INTO INSIGHT
- Insight comes from observations over time. These observations create trends and patterns that lead to clarity of thought, decisions, and, most importantly, action. Data must be harnessed and leveraged consistently and securely to make these observations. When data is leveraged, comments happen. When words occur over time, insights are created. When senses those insights are trusted, decisions are made. And those decisions lead to action.
- What’s the key to unlocking the most insight? Your company’s most valuable insights come from an ongoing discipline and thorough analysis, coupled with a scalable ability to translate large amounts of data into concise and compelling trends. Organizations that want to harness insights as a catalyst for growth require an ecosystem designed to harness data and the right tools to turn that data into something meaningful. It would be best if you had systems, tools, techniques, and analytics in the hands of the right people who know what to do to impact their customers and markets.
And that’s how our prospects turn data into insights to drive growth in the digital economy.