Choosing the Right Partner to Unlock Greater Scale, Efficiency and Innovation
Introduction
The Insights Family is the global leader in market intelligence for kids, tweens, teens, and families. It operates across 22 countries, surveying approximately 750,000 kids, parents, and family members, each year. This allows the company to provide real-time market intelligence to its clients, so they can make more informed decisions across their entire marketing mix.
The Insights Family chose to work with Walr as it was looking for a partner that would enable it to unlock greater scale, efficiency, and innovation. The partnership has become a core part of how the business operates, allowing it to grow even further and deliver more delight for its clients.
The Insights Family’s Founder, Nick Richardson breaks down why Walr is considered an integral partner.
The Challenge
We started our business in 2017, rapidly building our presence in the UK market. Within a short timeframe we began introducing our offering to the US. As we grew, our investment in the panel side of the business grew in parallel, becoming a significant – perhaps one of our largest – cost centres.
As a young business, it’s typical to reach this point and just ‘keep running’, however, I recognised that we needed to take a step back to re-evaluate our operations.
I knew to do this properly, we needed to go through an RFP process. While we were very happy with the panel providers we were working with, it was clear there was an opportunity to evaluate our requirements through a fresh lens; ultimately, we needed a partner that could scale with us and bring innovation to the table.
As a company, we are always considering how we can improve efficiency, meet our customers’ growing needs and stay up to date with the latest technological trends. Therefore, even though there are some really great providers out there, with fairly large tech stacks, none of them were quite in step with where our business was and where we wanted to go.
When we saw Walr’s proposal, we were impressed by the level of investment it had made in the data creation space. Not only could the team do the basics, but they could help us deliver more, scale as we scaled, and implement important quality control processes along the way.
Combining Empathy with Innovation to Build a Long-Lasting Partnership
When it came to overcoming our challenge of picking the right partner, there were a couple of attributes that made Walr stand out.
Firstly, we were at similar stages of development and growth. Walr understood the challenges we faced and showed attentiveness, empathy, and a real commitment to our needs. For example, we were allowed to run some tests, so we could get comfortable with the technology, before we fully switched over.
Secondly, it took the time to understand the problems and key areas of focus within our business. This enabled us to zoom in on specific processes together, to build solutions that addressed any inefficiencies.
For example, we conduct research in 22 countries, across 6 continents. For each survey, in each market, there are three associated links: one for parents, one for children online and one for children offline. This is at least 66 unique links – more if there are multiple languages to consider. Previously, this involved an arduous level of manual management. Thanks to Walr, we now have an automated link management system, which has drastically improved our ability to scale.
By taking the time to build a long-term partnership, Walr is able to support us on our future roadmap, addressing inefficiencies and truly setting us up for success.
How Does Walr Set The Insights Family Up for Success?
Without our panel of engaged respondents, we don’t have a product. So Walr is really the lifeblood of our business, a bit like oil in an engine – we would slow down very quickly without them!
Walr is responsible for ensuring that we’re hitting our quotas, staying ahead of the curve in terms of quality controls, and collecting the data our customers need. It is absolutely one of the most fundamental elements of the business.
What Comes Next for this Partnership?
As a business, we have our ambitions set on moving into more regions, with some exciting news on that to follow.
In terms of the technology, there is a lot in the works around integration and innovation. We expect Walr to pioneer that custom work to build in even more reactiveness to our offering. For example, our portal has thousands of users, if we can work with Walr to enable them to build their own survey, without leaving our environment, they will have the power to get the data they need in a few clicks.
How Would You Describe Walr’s Service in Three Words?
Timely, reliable, and dedicated.
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