How Ipsos has digitally adapted to changing business needs

Since it began moving its panel surveys online in 2001, the multinational market research and consulting firm has been steadfast in embracing new technologies and methodologies to improve efficiency and value proposition for clients.

The biggest asset to make decisions in a dynamic world is accurate data relevant to organizations carrying out strategic plans. And Paris-based Ipsos has been well equipped in this area by offering its over 5,000 clients an understanding of how to help them confidently navigate a world in rapid transformation. Over decades, a reliance on technology has been key.

Digital transformation is hardly a new concept for Ipsos, says global CIO Humair Mohammed, since the company has been on a continuous journey for over 20 years to adapt its internal and external processes to new business needs and opportunities in order to build on its quality to customers.

A fortuitous path

Ipsos’ digital transformation process can be divided, according to Mohammed, into several stages, each with its own objectives and challenges. The first of these began in 2001. “We were one of the first research companies to move its panels and surveys online, reducing costs and increasing the speed and scope of data collection,” says Mohammed. Shortly after, in 2002, the company began to deliver its knowledge to customers online, using dashboards and interactive reports that provided easier and faster access to data and analysis.

The digitization of internal processes came years later, 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 helped transform his organization by leveraging Microsoft Office 365. “This enabled better collaboration and productivity among employees, partners, and customers around the world,” he says.

The latest moves in this transformation process came in 2018, when Ipsos 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 in 2023, AI-powered Insights Delivery was introduced to transform the way the company works and delivers insights to clients. “We use large language models to generate cutting-edge insights that are built using AI capabilities, complemented by data science models and tailored to the services offered,” he says.

The latest: reporting standardization

One of Ipsos’ latest digital transformation-related projects is moving its reporting and analytics to a standard digital delivery platform 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 clients.

According to Mohammed, a key benefit of this project is consistency, since Ipsos can ensure results across geographies, sectors, and services following the same standards and best practices. Flexibility is another, since it allows the brand to customize its deliverables according to specific needs and preferences of each client, using different formats, languages, and visualizations. Then there’s scalability through cloud computing, which helps handle large volumes of data and complex analysis without compromising performance or quality.

To succeed on all these innovative fronts, Ipsos works with leading cloud providers to leverage their infrastructure, services, and expertise. 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 customers,” he says. “Externally, it’s seen a steady rise in customer satisfaction surveys, revenue, stock price, and ratings as the most innovative provider in the market research industry.”

A technological base

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

Among the technologies Ipsos uses, cloud computing stands out, with services from Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and AWS for infrastructure, storage, computing, analysis, and AI needs.

Additionally, the company has developed its own reporting engine, providing 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 is a data science engine that performs advanced analysis and modeling, using open standards such as Python, R, TensorFlow and PyTorch.

Finally, it also 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

But this journey doesn’t end here. The company 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. For this reason, Ipsos has begun working on projects such as sentiment analysis of consumers and interest groups from multiple sources, such as social media, opinions, surveys, and interviews. It also uses this technology to summarize large amounts of text from news articles, reports, documents, and transcripts, as well as generate new texts for various purposes such as headlines, legends, descriptions, and recommendations.

“Ipsos has significantly evolved technologically in the last decade to deliver better insights and solutions to its clients,” he says, and the work continues to further evolve, innovate, and digitally transform. “We believe we have a strong competitive advantage in the market research industry thanks to technological capabilities, a global presence, and a customer-centric approach,” he adds.

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