A history of tech adaptation for today’s changing business needs

Since its digital transformation beginnings in 2001, Paris-based market research firm Ipsos has adopted many technologies and methodologies to improve its efficiency and value proposition to pave the way for the future.

The best weapon to make decisions in a dynamic world is accurate and relevant information so organizations can carry out strategic plans in the most reliable way.

Ipsos, for example, has been offering its more than 5,000 clients an understanding and vision of the actions, opinions, and motivations of millions of citizens, consumers, patients, and employees in order to help them confidently navigate a world in rapid transformation. But to get to this point, the organization has had to rely on technology for decades as a strategic tool. “Digital transformation is not a new concept for Ipsos,” says global CIO Humair Mohammed. “The company has been on a continuous journey to adapt its internal and external processes to new business needs and opportunities since 2001.”

Its digital transformation process can be divided into several stages, according to Mohammed, each with its own objectives and challenges. The first was becoming one of the first research companies to move its panels and surveys online, reducing costs and increasing the speed and scope of data collection. Following this, in 2002, it began delivering its knowledge to customers in online format, using dashboards and interactive reports that provided easier and faster access to data and analysis.

The digitization of internal processes came in 2011, when the company decided to streamline its internal data management, quality control, project management, and communication processes through digital tools and platforms. And four years after that, Mohammed transformed his organization by leveraging Microsoft Office 365, which, he says, enabled better collaboration and productivity among his employees, partners, and customers around the world.

The latest moves in the process came in 2018 when the brand launched its full end-to-end service capability for packaged research through its digital platform, allowing clients to design, execute, and analyze their own research projects using Ipsos’ experience and resources. And last year, with AI-powered Insights Delivery, it completed a phase of its journey using artificial intelligence to transform the way it works and delivers insights to clients. “To do this, Ipsos uses large language models to generate cutting-edge insights built using AI capabilities, complemented by its data science models and tailored to the services it offers,” says Mohammed.

Reporting standardization

One of Ipsos’ latest digital transformation-related projects is the move of its reporting and analytics to a standard digital delivery platform. This project aims to enable the company to transform its insight delivery by using a cloud-enabled infrastructure and proprietary reporting engine, built on open standards.

The initiative follows agile methodologies to offer faster and better results to its clients. According to Mohammed, a key benefit is consistency since Ipsos can ensure its results are consistent across geographies, sectors, and services, following the same standards and best practices. In addition, he adds, flexibility also stands out, since it allows the brand to customize deliverables according to specific needs and preferences of each client, using different formats, languages, and visualizations. Plus, it helps with scalability — helping to handle large volumes of data and complex analysis without compromising performance or quality through cloud computing — and innovation by incorporating new features and functionalities into its deliverables, using the latest technologies and tools available.

To carry out all these projects, Ipsos works with leading cloud computing technologies Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and AWS for its infrastructure, storage, analysis, and AI needs. In some cases, it also works with select integrators such as Accenture and ThoughtWorks to help implement and integrate solutions. According to Mohammed, the results of this digital transformation journey are measurable and impressive. “Internally, it’s achieved higher employee satisfaction, faster response times, better collaboration, and better value for its customers,” he says. “Externally, it’s seen a steady increase in customer satisfaction surveys, revenue, stock price, and ratings as the most innovative provider in the market research industry.”

Technological base

Ipsos considers digital transformation a strategic priority for its continued growth and competitiveness. “We rely on cloud-scale technologies and proprietary data science and analytics engines built on open standards to handle massive data sets,” says Mohammed. Additionally, it continuously explores reams of data and modern tools to improve its capabilities and adapt to the changing data landscape.

Additionally, the company has developed its own reporting engine, which provides advanced statistical analysis along with interactive dashboards and reports, using open standards such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, D3.js and React.js. Another of its own technological developments, according to Mohammed, is the data science engine that performs advanced analysis and modeling, using open standards such as Python, R, TensorFlow and PyTorch. Plus, it uses LLMs like GPT-4 to generate natural language insights from data using AI techniques like natural language processing and generation.

A cutting-edge future

With the future in sight, Ipsos plans to undertake more digital transformation projects, with a focus on leveraging LLMs to deliver cutting-edge insights to clients. “We believe LLMs have the potential to revolutionize the research industry by delivering faster, deeper, and more relevant insights from data,” says Mohammed. With this in mind, the company uses this technology on, for instance, sentiment analysis of consumers and interest groups from multiple sources, such as social media, opinions, surveys, and interviews; summarized text from news articles, reports, documents and transcripts; and on generation of new texts like headlines, legends, descriptions, and recommendations.

“Ipsos has significantly evolved technologically in the last decade to deliver better insights and solutions to clients,” says Mohammed. “We believe we have a strong competitive advantage in the market research industry thanks to technological capabilities, global presence, and a customer-centric approach.” So the goal is to continue leading the digital transformation of the industry, exploring new technologies, developing new methodologies, and creating new products. And all this by relying on a talented team of IT professionals, data scientists, analysts, researchers and consultants working together to deliver the best results for the company and its clients.

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