At Red Badger we’ve been delivering outstanding products for our customers for eight years. We help our clients solve problems and deliver real impact through innovation, transformation and culture. Because of this heritage, creating an Insights function was a logical next step for Red Badger. Helping our clients better understand their problems and the value of the potential solutions means we can deliver the right solutions like never before.
I’d worked with Red Badger previously at Sky and more recently in a collaboration with Fortnum & Mason so when they asked me to join the company it was a no-brainer. Having loved the culture of the company and been impressed by the products they created, I knew it was a chance to make a difference to their clients by more effectively using data to make better decisions and create better products.
Insights are fundamental to everything we do at Red Badger. During delivery, rapid analysis and optimisation takes a POC/ MVP to fully functioning product more quickly by allowing product owners to make better decisions. Understanding which features impact conversion or retention allows them to be prioritised leading to better products. Post-launch insights tell us how the product is being used and if the original problem has been solved.
A key component to insights is to collect the right data and ask the right questions. A statement often attributed to Einstein was that if he had an hour to solve a complicated problem, he’d spend 55 minutes on understanding the question and 5 minutes solving the problem. Challenging assumptions and constantly asking ‘why’ is the start of gaining insights. I spent years studying chemistry gaining a PhD which most people laugh at and assume was a waste of time. But chemistry is about problem solving. Understanding what’s going on and how to influence it.
As I start to build a new team I’ll be introducing more critical ways of thinking, both internally and to our existing clients. Encouraging them to look at their products and challenge why requirements are as they are, what success will look like for their products, how success is measured and how that feeds in to the future of their product roadmap.
It’s always amused me that insights is a bit like sex when you’re sixteen. You think everyone else is doing it and when you eventually try it, you think you’re pretty good at it. The reality is that most people are thinking about it but few are doing it well. To move away from clichés such as ‘lowest hanging fruit’ and ‘crystalise the learning’ a company needs to embrace insights in every department, as part of the company DNA, and not have isolated to a specific department. In this way insights becomes part of the company culture and not a deck that’s produced every 12 months.
If you’d like to discuss Insights or know someone who wants to join the team, please get in touch.
Blog article by our Insights Director James Muldoon