b'SECTION 02 DATA INTEGRATIONSales & financial dataThe next step in integration is to link theYou can then analyse the attitudinal data customer-level transactional data withlooking for leading indicators - things that the sales and financial data. CRM andpredict changes in customer behaviour and financial data will likely have some kinddrive financial outcomes. The success ofMulti-agency dataof relationship anyway and becomingthe Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an part of that relationship is vital for anexample of this - its an attitudinal Insight Community. It creates the linkmeasure which nevertheless has beenA community creates the opportunity to draw in data from other research projects. between the community and real businessfound to predict changes in customerCommon examples of this are consumer segmentation and brand tracking. These are outcomes which is so important. behaviour which map on to actual results. core research needs but arent always suitable as primary tasks for an Insight Community. The question is, though, what can theA community can be too skewed towards existing customers to provide a sound basis for Insight Community bring to thatIdentifying the factors which predict ora segmentation, for instance.relationship? How can integration helpdrive changes in customer life cycles allows the Finance and Sales departments drivefor better customer value modelling.But if that segmentation shares a language with the community - if community members performance via customer knowledge?Modelling not just which groups are thecan be accurately allotted to segments, or if both sets of data can mesh with other data most valuable now but which groups are(e.g. CRM) then the segmentation can inform the Insight Communitys work without being Well, your Insight Community is a sourcelikely to be the most valuable in thedependent on it.of attitudinal data such as customernear-term. This chain of attitudinal, CRM, sentiment, opinion and predictedbehavioural and financial data can provide behaviour around the brand. Traditionallythe clearest link between the Insight it has been hard to marry this softCommunity and its contribution to attitudinal data with the hard financialprofitable growth.data. Its difficult for any researchers to prove the link between attitude andPurpose of integrationoutcome in a way thats rigorous enough to work at the Finance level. But when your community is integrated with yourWith each level of integration theA data lake with an Insight Community CRM, theres a much more directInsight Community becomes moreat its centre solves this problem. It makes relationship to financial outcomes. deeply linked to the real world ofit easier for organisations to access, customer behaviour and needs, andinterrogate and humanise their data. also to the aims of the business. Access is easier because the community brings together all of a companys The aim is not just to increase the numbercustomer experience data in one place. of things a community can do. Rather itsThis goes beyond other data portals by to create a data lake - a repository inallowing direct contact with customers in which all of a companys customerthe form of the community members. They knowledge can be pooled, analysedcan explain, not simply report, what the and accessed. data says. Can brands create these data lakes without an Insight Community as a basis? Many do! But ultimately what that creates is a larger database, which is more powerful for analysis but does little to democratise data within an organisation and make insight truly accessible.13 | INSIGHT COMMUNITIES 2023 14 | INSIGHT COMMUNITIES 2023'