TL;DR Summary
-
Moving from data collection to strategic influence, insights teams must evolve from answering “What?” to enabling “So what?” and “Now what?”.
-
Familiar threats: Information silos, fragmented tools, and slow processes keep insights reactive and disconnected from real-time decisions.
-
Stravito AI Personas turn static segmentation into dynamic, conversational profiles so teams can synthesize, test, and act faster.
-
The future of insights is all about making existing data smarter, accessible, and directly connected to business strategy.
A look back to Richmond
At the Richmond Market Insight Forum in New York City, Colleen Funkey, former VP of Customer Insights at Estée Lauder, shared a compelling visual framework that struck a chord with us and the insights professionals at the event: a "Hierarchy of Needs" for insights teams.
Much like Maslow’s pyramid, her model starts with foundational elements like accessible data and builds toward strategic influence. It articulates what many insights leaders already feel: that unlocking true business impact depends on evolving the role of insights from reactive research providers to proactive strategic partners.
The journey from data to impact
At the base of the hierarchy are needs like "What?" and "Key Findings," where many teams are still overwhelmed by information silos, disconnected systems, and underutilized research. Climbing the pyramid requires enabling faster synthesis ("So what?") and more confident activation ("Now what?").
But the climb is often harder than it looks. Across industries, common friction points persist:
- Weeks-long focus group cycles delay decisions and often lead to retesting when early ideas fall flat.
- Underused segmentation means foundational research sits idle, disconnected from real-time strategy.
- Fragmented platforms keep insights, tools, and research assets siloed, limiting collaboration.
- Low global adoption stalls momentum when local teams can’t bring personas to life or validate ideas quickly.
These challenges create a gap between what insights teams know and what they can act on. The result? Slower decisions, missed opportunities, and ideas that never reach their full potential.
How AI Personas accelerate the climb
Stravito AI Personas transforms static segmentation data into dynamic, conversational profiles of your key customer groups. These personas can be queried in natural language, used to simulate feedback on concepts, or even to test messaging across different consumer segments.
Colleen’s framework and AI Personas together paint a clear picture: the future of insights work is not about collecting more data, but about making the data work harder, faster, and more intuitively.
By integrating AI Personas into your insights stack, you reduce friction at every level of the hierarchy. You eliminate hours of manual synthesis. You empower teams to test and iterate in real-time. And most importantly, you put the voice of the consumer closer to strategic decisions, not just reports.
As insights leaders look to move from storytelling to strategy, tools like AI Personas offer a bridge. They help teams climb from key findings to impact, and they do it without waiting for the next round of fieldwork.
Want more ways to accelerate insights maturity? Book a demo to see how Stravito can help you climb your own hierarchy of needs.
