First Insight has announced a major expansion of its Voice of Customer Analytics platform, offering new functionalities to help clients develop a keener understanding of what their customers want to purchase and why.
On Thursday, the digital testing technology firm revealed new features for its platform, suggesting the update could help users enable “unprecedented” scale while maintaining high levels of data security for brands that introduce large numbers of products each year.
First Insight said its new-and-improved Voice of Customer Analytics platform will also now have the capacity to provide attribute-level analytics, along with the tools to compare products within an assortment.
“Today, First Insight is the only platform performing digital testing of tens of thousands of products annually for many of our retail partners,” Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight, said in a statement. “Operating at that scale requires mission-critical analytics and integration capabilities. We continue to invest heavily in our solution and are excited to extend our platform with these enhancements.”
One of the most important aspects of the new release is an upgraded application programming interface (API) that allows for more streamlined integration between InsightSUITE applications and existing product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. First Insight said this should allow consumer feedback to be integrated into the entire product creation process, from initial concept to the manufacturing phase.
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This emphasis on compatibility echoes the recent integration of First Insight’s platform with Li & Fung’s Digital Product Development solution in December.
“We have been investing in our Digital Product Development services for the past three years, bringing together technologies that support our goal of creating the supply chain of the future,” Spencer Fung, group CEO of Li & Fung, added. “First Insight brings the leading digital consumer product testing solution and we are using it to complement our digital services and help our customers improve sales and margins.”
Other improvements to the platform include improved aggregation of dashboard analytics, allowing designers and planners to more quickly gain access to graphical reports concerning factors like system utilization and test item scores. New tagging functionalities could also help improve searches for products and the insights found therein.
Another significant change is the addition of attribute analysis, enabling designers to take a closer look at the consumer reactions to specific parts of a product, including colors, materials, patterns and silhouettes. By considering data at this level of detail, brands will now have the chance to tweak smaller aspects of a product as opposed to going back to the drawing board, First Insight said.
The platform also now has an “Interactions Analysis” function that will let brands test products in relation to each other, with the goal of preventing cannibalism between products.
“Some items may be highly cannibalistic of each other, while others may offer incremental opportunity when placed together in an assortment,” the company said. “First Insight’s new Interactions Analysis capability lets companies understand these effects and explore the specific groups of consumers to which an item—or an item bundle—will appeal.”
Additionally, the upgraded Voice of Customer Analytics platform is said to comply with global data security standards, including SOC 2 and GDPR, requiring single sign-on among other enterprise-grade security features.