The figures were released as part of the first wave of Millward Brown Vermeer’s Insights2020 study, in partnership with The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), ESOMAR, LinkedIn, Kantar and Korn Ferry. The study is focused on aligning insights and analytics strategy, structure and capability to drive business growth.

Results revealed that 74% of over-performing companies create customer experiences based on data-driven insights, while only 30% of under-performing companies report the same. Other results included:

• 83% of revenue growth over-performers link everything the company does to its brand purpose, as opposed to only 31% among revenue growth under-performers
• 62% of over-performers leverage insights and analytics to drive consistency across all customer touch-points, only 26% of under-performers do
• In 78% of over-performing companies, customer-centricity is fully embraced by all functions whereas this is only true in 12% of the under-performing companies
• 66% of all over-performers are working to link their disparate data sources, compared with only 33% of under-performing companies doing so
• The Insights and Analytics function reports straight into the CEO in 33% of over-performer companies; this is true for only 13% of the under-performers  

”[…] Insights2020 found that companies that out-perform their peers on revenue growth do so by over-performing on key drivers of customer-centricity,” said Frank ven den Driest, chief commercial officer at Millward Brown Vermeer, and Insights2020 global programme leader. “With a robust and global sample, we are able to quantify the financial opportunity for any business and guide organisations on their journeys to customer-centricity.

“The connection is clear and it is time to elevate insights and analytics to the boardroom.”

The study gathered feedback from 10,000 practitioners across 60 marketers, as well as conducting 325 in-depth interviews with senior marketing and insights leaders.