Building a Business Case for Customer Insights Technology

Data is everywhere, and organizations have unprecedented access to information. Yet access to data doesn’t always translate into better business decisions. In the past year, we’ve seen more promises of AI-powered customer insights technology that can transform your organization’s vast information into actionable insights. We’ve also seen a shift in decision-making authority for technology investments at large companies.

Having spent over 25 years working in knowledge management, insights, and consumer intelligence roles at multiple Fortune 100 companies, I’ve seen firsthand how organizations that invest in tools to harness the power of their data achieve a strategic advantage. At Bloomfire, our AI-powered solution focuses on centralizing market research, competitive intelligence, and customer feedback, which acts as a megaphone to empower teams to make informed, data-driven decisions.

However, in the past year, I’ve seen even the strongest customer insights leaders struggling to get the needed investments in technology, talent, and resources. In part due to the explosion of AI-based tools, the balance of power for technology decisions has shifted away from business leaders and over to IT and IS leaders. Now more than ever, getting the right tools for your research department necessitates building a robust business case to get organizational buy-in and re-capture ownership of the budget. 

Why Invest in AI Customer Insights Technology?

AI-powered insights platforms have become indispensable for organizations looking to harness the power of data. These platforms can process and analyze customer data at scale, revealing patterns, trends, and actionable insights that drive customer experience, marketing strategy, and product development.

Here’s why investing in AI-driven customer insights technology should be a top priority for any organization, not just the department level:

• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Organizations with advanced data-driven customer insights technology make better decisions by turning data into predictive models and real-time insights. 
• Operational Efficiency: AI platforms automate the repetitive tasks of answering questions or locating reports, freeing time for teams to focus on high-impact initiatives.
• Enhanced Personalization: Having the correct answers and insights available to decision-makers enables more tailored offerings to customer needs, boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

What Problems Does Customer Insights Technology Solve?

Organizations often struggle with data silos, decentralized information, and manual processes for gathering and analyzing customer data. By investing in customer insights technology, businesses solve critical issues that limit their ability to act swiftly and strategically:

• Data Silos and Fragmentation: A multinational manufacturer found their insights scattered across departments, delaying decisions. AI-powered insights technology centralizes customer data. Combined with a company-wide knowledge management system, it ensures data is stored and actively used to drive real-time decisions.
• Inefficient Processes: At a leading global technology company, decentralized market research practices led to inefficiencies and redundant work. By standardizing data collection and analysis through AI-driven platforms, their organization streamlined operations and eliminated duplication of effort, avoiding over $150k in wasted research.
• Inaccessible Insights: Another organization with dozens of researchers across multiple departments found that storing data in isolated folders slowed down decision-making. By implementing our AI-driven platforms, insights were easily accessible across the company, ensuring data was used to drive business strategies at every level.
• Faster Onboarding: A financial services company recognized a 15% improvement in onboarding time for new and transferring employees, saving hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in time productivity.

In each of these cases, the organizations struggled because they lacked a unified, easily accessible platform for sharing insights. Customer insights technology solves these issues by centralizing knowledge and making it available to the right people at the right time.

But how do you convince your organization to invest in this technology? You start by building a solid business case demonstrating the need for this tool and the value it will deliver.

4 Steps to Building a Business Case for AI-Powered Customer Insights

Building a business case for AI-powered insights requires more than just explaining the technology’s benefits. You need to align the investment with your organization’s broader goals and demonstrate both strategic and financial value.

1. Understand Stakeholder Needs and Gather Evidence

The first step to building a business case is understanding who your key stakeholders are and what matters most to them. Engage with leaders across different departments—marketing, sales, R&D, and others—to identify their priorities and pain points. What challenges do they face when accessing data? How do inefficiencies in sharing insights impact their ability to meet their goals?

Start by engaging departments that heavily rely on data to inform their strategies—such as marketing, product development, and your knowledge management system team. Understanding their annual priorities will help you align the value of customer insights technology with broader organizational goals.

By gathering this information, you’ll identify the most pressing needs across your organization and create a case aligned with each department’s broader goals. For example, marketing may want faster access to competitive insights to refine messaging, while R&D may need consumer feedback to guide product development. This evidence will form the backbone of your case for investing in customer insights solutions.

2. Showcase the Strategic Value of AI-Powered Insights

ou’ve gathered stakeholder input, the next step is to show how an insights engine aligns with your organization’s strategic priorities. AI-driven customer insights technology isn’t just about automating data analysis—it’s about aligning the insights with the company’s broader strategic goals. If your organization prioritizes customer experience, demonstrate how AI-powered insights can enhance personalization and improve customer satisfaction. If operational efficiency is key, show how these insights streamline workflows and reduce manual processes.

Be sure to highlight how AI technology can support long-term strategic initiatives, such as entering new markets or launching new products, by providing the data and insights needed to make informed decisions.

 3. Demonstrate the Financial Value

Every investment must show a return. Decision-makers will want to understand the financial impact of an insights engine, so it’s critical to conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis. The total cost of ownership (TCO) is a helpful metric here, as it allows you to compare the cost of maintaining current systems (including inefficiencies and redundancies) to the cost of implementing centralized customer insights technology.

Start by calculating potential cost savings, such as reduced labor hours from automated data processing or lower costs due to improved decision-making. Then, outline the technology’s revenue-generating potential, including its ability to identify new market opportunities or boost customer retention through more targeted marketing. 

For example, one recent implementation of Bloomfire for a global insights team across its enterprise suggested a value assessment of over $10 million over three years. This was based on eliminating siloed data and a greatly improved search and retrieval success rate, eliminating duplicate work and identifying knowledge gaps, and significantly improving new hires’ time to proficiency through streamlined onboarding.

4. Prepare a Compelling Narrative

Finally, your business case must be compelling and relatable to secure buy-in from your stakeholders. Use storytelling techniques to demonstrate how investing in customer insights solutions can solve specific problems and create new opportunities. Draw on examples from within your organization or cite the experiences of companies that have successfully adopted AI-powered insights platforms.

By framing your business case for adopting data-driven customer insights platforms as a solution to your organization’s specific problems, you’ll help decision-makers understand the value of the investment.

Securing Executive Buy-In for Insights and AI

Building an insights engine is not just about technology; it’s about empowering your teams with the knowledge they need to make smarter, faster decisions. But to make this a reality, you’ll need executive buy-in. Here are a few tips for making your case:

• Leverage success stories: Share examples of companies where the lack of centralized insights hindered performance. This can create a sense of urgency and help executives see the value in investing.
• Highlight the risk of inaction: While the initial investment might seem significant, emphasize the long-term efficiencies, cost savings, and strategic advantages an insights engine will deliver.
• Tie it to broader business goals: Whether driving growth, improving customer experience, or boosting operational efficiency, show how an insights engine directly aligns with your company’s strategic priorities.

Align your proposal with your organization’s annual planning cycle to make the strongest case for investing in an insights engine. Demonstrate how AI-powered customer insights can drive long-term strategic priorities, such as building a robust company-wide knowledge management system that enhances cross-department collaboration and data usage.

The Role of AI in Shaping the Future of Insights

As technology continuously evolves, it’s clear that AI-powered insights platforms are not just a trend—they will play heavily into the arsenal of tools a modern customer insights team utilizes. The ability to analyze large sets of structured and unstructured data and provide real-time, actionable insights will give businesses the greater agility needed to thrive in today’s competitive market.

By building a strong business case and demonstrating the strategic and financial value of an AI-powered customer insights platform, you can position your organization to fully take advantage of this transformative technology and secure the budget, resources, and decision authority to make those investments. 

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About the Author

Dan Stradtman

A long time veteran of the insights and consumer intelligence industry, Dan has shaped marketing strategy and developed leaders at many of the worlds largest companies. When creating insights engines that amplify the strategic value of market research, Dan chose Bloomfire.