The research agency’s AI efficiency playbook

The rise of AI has led to a surge of excitement, anxiety, and confusion within the research industry.

Agency leaders can reap the rewards of this new landscape with our five guiding principles for integrating AI into your strategies. From boosting operational efficiency to balancing the benefits with human oversight, practical approaches like demystifying AI, piloting solutions, and understanding insights agencies can embrace AI’s potential while maintaining human-centric leadership and customer touchpoints to drive sustainable value and innovation.

AI hype is everywhere.

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 kicked off the Generative AI Era. There followed an explosion of AI startups, a deluge of media stories and a frantic effort by businesses to grapple with the implications.

In the research and insights industry, agency leaders have experienced the full range of emotions: excitement about the potential upside from software tools; anxiety over the long-term commercial impacts; and bewilderment at the sheer number of AI solutions coming to market.

All these responses are justified.

Agencies should be enthusiastic about AI solutions that can shorten project timelines, reduce manual effort and generate new value for clients.

They should also be concerned about the potential impact on staff development, client expectations and competitor behavior.

And anyone would feel a little overwhelmed when there are over 250 AI research tools, many offering new capabilities like agents, chat-with-data and synthetic participants.

This white paper aims to help agency leaders balance the conflicting emotions triggered by AI. We’ll lay out five principles agencies should adopt when planning for an AI-enabled future; and explain five practical ways that AI can be applied by agencies right now for measurable efficiency.

AI holds enormous potential to add value for research and insights businesses. We hope we can inspire you to grasp the opportunity.