Introduction: Synthesising Insights
So, you’ve worked through the 3C’s and gathered a lot of data around your Customers, Competitors, and your capabilities. Now you need to synthesise insights from that data, across all three lenses in a way that helps you drive out key insights on your proposition. This is the stage in the process where you can gain true clarity and lift the fog on why customers buy from you and why you might edge out the competition.
Before getting into how you can go about converting data into insight, one key warning: don’t get fixated on the first thing you learn. It’s likely there are different ways you can view the insights that come through, different ways you can package your insights into slightly different propositions. Be open and inquisitive at this stage, allow for the opportunity to learn.
Synthesis in action
The synthesis of insights from across the 3Cs lays the groundwork for the creative development of your proposition. Key questions you are looking to answer include:
- How well do you deliver against your customer needs?
- Are there particular strengths (and weaknesses) that you have in high-order need areas for customers?
- How do the strengths and weaknesses your customer outlined align (or not) with what internal people have outlined?
- How do you, capability-wise, stack up against the competition?
- Are there gaps in the market that present opportunities for differentiation?
If we are completely honest, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all tool or template to use here. Most of the time it requires comparing and contrasting different pieces of insight, exploring relationships, and thinking through the ‘so what’ in what has been captured. Remember, proposition development, although grounded in insight, requires a significant dose of artistry and creativity.
To help with this process:
- Whiteboard it, don’t PPT it: Capture all insight, big or small, on a whiteboard, use an interactive one if you are a remote or often remote business. We always use Miro (no ad plug here but it’s the best tool we have used and we’ve tried a few) whether we are working as a team physically located or remote. It allows you to revisit content, view everything in one place, organise and reorganise content, and make connections between pieces of insight that may have been captured over a few weeks and/or by different people
- Make it a team sport: A Miro board full of information can be a lonely place for one person to navigate. The volume of insight that’s gathered using the 3C’s framework can be a little overwhelming. Hopefully, it’s full of rich commentary, data points, links and visuals from different sources. Therefore, working through it and extracting the insights individually before wrangling with it as a team, not only accelerates this step but improves it.
- Capture ideas as you go: Don’t wait for the next step to generate ideas for the leading messaging of your proposition. If you have done well in developing insights across the 3 C’s, you should already be generating potential ideas for your proposition. These ideas come naturally as you capture and synthesise the information. Make sure you have a place on your whiteboard to capture these for later. Returning back to that warning though, how ever great an idea might sound at this stage, don’t get fixated, capture it and move on through the data.
A simple process to go from data to insights:
- Data to Observations: As you review the data you have captured, what do you takeaway from it as you read. What emerges from the raw data that makes you think or plants ideas into your head? Add post-its in a different colour so you know what’s raw data vs. an observation you’ve made about the data.
- Observations to Themes: What groups of observations or clusters and themes are you seeing come through as you learn? Grab (or copy) those observation post-its and place them in areas where you can start to cluster them around similar concepts and ideas.
- Themes to Insights: Critically assess each of the themes, clusters and remaining individual observations. Think about the ‘So What’ for each, how are these meaningful to you and your customers, what are the implications to all stakeholders?
Sharing insights across the organisation.
An essential final step in this phase is to share the gathered insights with contributors across the organisation. This ensures that all stakeholders feel heard and onboard before you get into the development of the proposition. It also allows you to review and fill any gaps you might have before starting Phase 2: ‘Design’.
Again capture proposition ideas that come from these conversations, you and the working team aren’t the only people with good ideas, and as [LINK] we know [LINK], more ideas from more people always improves the chances of landing on something great.
A powerful tip to guarantee an AHA! moment with the insight
A powerful tool to offer new insight and value to those who have inputted into the insight phase is to playback discrepancies between what customers value and internal perceptions of what they value. Or a disconnect in what you think you’re strong at and what customers think.
This exercise can reveal genuine customer motivations and help teams discuss and correct false assumptions. This step not only validates the discovery process in the minds of stakeholders but also emphasises the importance of customer insights in guiding business strategy and communication. Highlight these discrepancies when you share the insights across the organisation and openly discuss what they mean for your organisation and wider proposition and what you might do about them going forward.
Conclusion
So there you have it, a simple set of steps and some hints on converting data you’ve collected through the 3Cs framework to insights that you can action in your proposition through your messaging, product improvement roadmap and the sales/service experience you deliver your customers.
