Insight & strategy Taking stock of insight Tesco has access to a wealth of data on its customers and employees, but simplicity and clarity of purpose are paying dividends for the insight team in 2020. By Katie McQuater A s group insight director at the UKs biggest supermarket chain, its perhaps unsurprising that one of Naomi Kasolowskys priorities is to keep things simple, both in terms of purpose and output. Insight teams have a huge responsibility to convey meaning with as much accuracy as possible especially when you work in a business like Tesco, where you work with a lot of stakeholders and the impact of what youre saying or recommending is far-reaching, she says. Never has simplicity and clarity been more necessary than during the complexity of the past few months. For a company at the forefront of responding to the pandemic, from keeping stock levels stable to introducing a range of new social distancing measures, insight has been in high demand. Kasolowsky is responsible for all the insight teams across Tesco, including more than 100 people in the UK and teams overseas. The responsibility of the function is to identify opportunities for growth and inform how the business develops new propositions, as well as being accountable for customer understanding and the impact of propositions on brand health and customer experience. The team uses a partnership model to work with colleagues across the business, including the customer function, strategy and finance, product function, category buying teams, and product development. The team has recently invested in thinking differently about how it partners with these stakeholders, forming a closer relationship and embedding themselves within the processes and functions they support. We walk more in their shoes and we take ourselves out of the vantage point 30 Impact ISSUE 31 20_pp30-33 I&S Tesco.indd 30 18/09/2020 11:45