Pernod Ricard is one of the world’s leading global wine and spirits Groups with 240 premium brands available in over 160 countries. Widely recognized as a consumer-centric company, the Group strives to provide its customers with world-class products and outstanding service.
“We aim to put the consumer at the heart of everything we do,” explains Florence Rainsard, Global Consumer Insights Director at Pernod Ricard. “Each time we have a business question or need to make a decision, we aim to give a seat at the table to the consumer and listen to their point of view.”
To be seen at the cutting edge of insight and foresight, Pernod Ricard has a focus on new technologies. “We’re always challenging ourselves to utilize the most future looking technology,” says Florence.
A year ago, the organization started using Stravito to further integrate consumer insights. Internally branded The Insight Factory, the platform ensures the Marketing function remains inspired and updated on what the entire Group does.
“Before we took the decision to have a knowledge management solution it was really difficult to share all of the insights we were gathering,” says Florence. “People were spending too much time sending emails looking for information, which ultimately led to the duplication of work. There wasn’t enough transparency between teams, and accessing insights was challenging.”
The Netflix of Insights
“We needed a Global Library of insights that could be updated on a regular basis, and plugged with lots of different sources of data. But, we were also looking for a tool with vision that inspires individuals and encourages them to engage: The Netflix of Insights.”
This was particularly important to help individuals navigate Pernod Ricard’s organization, with many brands operating across different markets and verticals.
Florence comments, “The Insight Factory is customized to each individual user, depending on their market.”
“What really stood out to us about Stravito was the strong long term roadmap and product vision presented to us. It was clear Stravito’s proposition was aligned with our long term goals for sharing insights. Particularly as we wanted a global solution that we could customize internally.
Ultimately, we felt that Stravito was here to listen to and work with us. That’s a quality we look for with our providers but also in our teams when recruiting. The ability to be flexible and always share and develop.”
Working in a New Way
Pernod Ricard started using The Insight Factory 12 months ago.
“Effective change management has been critical to ensuring return rates and engagement in the platform remains high,” says Florence. “We are proactively carrying out a lot of work through Consumer Insights Ambassadors to make it the only channel for insights and foresight communication at Pernod Ricard.”
“We want it to become a habit that each time people think of insight or foresight - they immediately think of The Insight Factory. This, of course, takes time but so far it’s working well. We are growing and growing.”
Florence explains that the main benefit to The Insight Factory is its ability to help people work more efficiently.
“The Insight Factory not only avoids duplication but it also facilitates sharing and discussion between people who may not have realized that content was already there.”
The number of accounts on the platform has increased 199% since fully launching in January 2022; today counting more than 3,000 users. Documents within the platform have been accessed and viewed more than 26,000 times, and the number of uploads by users on the platform has increased by 236% since platform implementation last year.
A Consumer-Centric Approach
Whilst the marketing team within the Pernod Group is the primary audience for The Insight Factory, there are also a lot of other departments that are now using it to enhance their productivity and efficiency, from Finance to Operations to Communications.
Florence adds, “My team uses the platform a lot to prepare documents to share with the wider business, ensuring we create informative insight narratives that people can understand. The Insight Factory allows us to pinpoint and highlight exact pieces of research so we can present our findings back in a bitesize and digestible way.”
“We also link and access external data sources and update our RSS feed so we can monitor and stay up to date with industry news and relevant articles. The curation of content has also been hugely powerful for Pernod Ricard, particularly when creating Collections for Foresight.”
Yet, as more team members from Pernod Ricard start using the platform Florence is already seeing different usage patterns.
“We see a range of activity from team members - some use it for inspiration, others as a database, others to keep on top of webinars and content.”
With The Insight Factory entering its second year, Florence and her team will continue to monitor key performance indicators such as the number of users, the return traffic, and also the share of users across departments. Florence concludes,
“As we move forward, we want insights to continue to impact every kind of function in Pernod Ricard, ensuring the consumer has a share of voice in every business question. We see The Insight Factory as an important enabler in helping us achieve this.”
