Insight & strategy Heleyov explains: Insight is crucial in understanding the situation, both in hindsight (to understand the past and current situation) and, more importantly, to address the foresight about future development. Asahis insight work incorporates internal and external data, and how these two link together. A broader part of the data democratisation agenda and one of the priorities of insights at Asahi has been increasing the understanding of the role of data in the organisation. One of Heleyovs aims is to help sta at all levels understand that collecting data is the beginning of a research project, with insight, knowledge and action at the end point. If you are in the kitchen, you will rst decide if you want to make a cake or a soup, and then look in your fridge for the right ingredients, says Heleyov. It is like that with data. The role of insight is to transfer the data into actionable knowledge. It is not our role to confuse our stakeholders with confusing data. To do this, the team has tailored its approach to communicating research ndings and experimented with new mediums for sharing insights. The ways we used to share insights in The role of insight is to transfer the data into actionable knowledge the past needed to be revised, says Heleyov. We often saw insight mistaken for data, which is wrong, or reports mistaken for insight. In a nutshell, what we are trying to do is nd an eective way [of sharing research] for a specic audience the way we share insight with young marketers is dierent from how we share it with senior managers in sales, or people dealing with the sustainability agenda. The focus is on the stakeholders. They have also moved from what Heleyov terms tell mode to dialogue mode, avoiding the use of PowerPoint or monologues when working with stakeholders. We try to engage people in provocations or interactive sessions. If you are good enough, and provoke discussion and questions, it is much more impactful. The insights team has also experimented with podcasts to engage colleagues in the role of research in Asahi. People told us that being able to listen to the learning is much more impactful than any other source of learning, Heleyov adds. Is it universal? Denitely not, but for some people it can be a good way to get the information. Local avours For a large global organisation spanning various markets worldwide, with very dierent levels of market maturity and consumer trends in each location, insight inevitably needs to work across national boundaries, as well as within nations and regions. That brings its tensions from time to time, but Asahi has worked to bring the dierent local insight teams together and have them pulling in the same direction. The insight function has teams based in places including Prague, London and Hong Kong, and employs 11 nationalities, requiring eorts to bring the function together as a team. What was a real game-changer for us was connecting the teams when we created one Asahi Europe and an international insight organisation, Heleyov explains. The advent of Covid-19 ushered in an increasing focus on remote working techniques, which at Asahi has also helped bring disparate teams together across the globe. Virtual communication tools have also had a profound impact on the research techniques used. Heleyov says that the main lesson learned from the switch to remote working during the pandemic, when face-to-face qualitative work was impossible, was that the team was very comfortable with a digital-rst approach to interviewing and running research projects. This has helped and has been retained post-Covid, given Asahis global presence, the need for multi-market research projects and the diverse research team it employs, with sta in locations ranging from Canada to Hong Kong. We are also starting to use AI-based tools for speeding up qualitative work. For exploring some topics, instead of nding 20 people and talking to them in each market, we are doing much more 34 Impact ISSUE 44 2023_pp32-35 I&S Asahi.indd 34 05/12/2023 14:38