Mustard’s Richard Walker provides a structured breakdown of nine of the biggest challenges facing client-side market research and insight teams today, along with practical thoughts on what might actually help solve them.
If you work client-side in insight, chances are you’re feeling it. It’s been ramping up over recent years – and it isn’t abating. The pressure. The pace. The politics. The paradox of being more important than ever, but rarely feeling more stretched.
At Mustard, we spend a lot of time talking to in-house teams across our core sectors – retail, grocery and FMCG, financial services, leisure and tourism, B2B. We pay close attention to the themes raised at industry forums and within communities such as AURA, where senior insight leaders are refreshingly honest about what’s keeping them awake at night. And the truth is this:
It’s a world of problems.
Whether you find this cathartic or triggering, we’ve listened, we’ve digested and cogitated, and we’ve produced a logically ordered view of the nine biggest challenges facing client-side market research and insight teams right now. Plus, our thoughts on what might actually help solve them.
The 9 Biggest Challenges Facing Client-Side Market Research & Insight Teams
1. Making Insight Impactful (Not Just Interesting)
This consistently tops the list. “How do we make research more insightful and impactful?”. Most teams don’t struggle to generate data. They struggle to drive action. We’ve heard and observed the fact that, without proper activation planning, insight is often:
- Consumed passively
- Shared too late
- Overpowered by commercial opinion and “gut feel”
- Parked in a shared drive
Does this sound familiar? Then try this:
- Start with decisions and uses for the research, not research objectives.
- Design outputs around commercial moments (range reviews, pricing decisions, campaign planning).
- Co-create debriefs with your agencies AND your stakeholders instead of presenting to them
Both clients and agencies need to design with implementation in mind from day one.
2. Doing More With Less
Each year, ahead of Richmond Event’s Market Insight Forum, clients are invited to log their top 5 challenges ahead of the “super computer” matching clients with agencies. A selection of anonymised recurring responses for you…
“Time resource – we’re a very small team serving many brands.”
“Tight budgets across multiple portfolios.”
“Internal resource limitations.”
This challenge is not a passing phase. It’s prevalent, it’s structural and is sadly the status quo for many working client-side. Insight teams are leaner. Remits are broader. Expectations are higher.
Does this sound familiar? Then try this:
- Ruthless prioritisation frameworks.
- Tiered research approaches (gold/silver/bronze).
- Better use of existing data before commissioning new.
From an agency POV, find partners (like Mustard) who understand commercial trade-offs and don’t oversell complexity.
3. Proving ROI and Defending Market Research Budget
Budget pressure is rarely about money alone. It’s about perceived value. If insight can’t clearly demonstrate its commercial contribution, it becomes discretionary. Most insight, fundamentally, is commissioned to help clients make money or save money (or deliver a social return on investment) – or to manage risks.
So with this in mind:
- Always explicitly link projects to revenue, margin or risk mitigation – no matter how short or long term.
- Retrospectively review impact (and leave us a nice “making the difference” testimonial whilst you’re at it).
- Quote numbers whenever you can – “this insight informed X decision worth £Y”.
These conversation shifts help you move from “cost” to “investment”.
4. Balancing Speed and Rigour
Stakeholders want answers quickly. But good exploratory qualitative work takes time. Segmentation shouldn’t be rushed. Complex modelling needs careful handling. Time needs to be allocated for design iteration – whether qualitative, quantitative or hybrid. Insight teams sit firmly in the tension between immediacy and integrity.
Sound familiar? Here’s how we’ve seen others manage this:
- Setting clear expectations at the brief development stage.
- Exploring agile research design without methodological compromise (we’re increasingly taking a “Sprint” mindset and approach to our multi-phased programmes).
- Educating stakeholders on trade-offs.
Speed is important. But false confidence can prove expensive. The best “quick turnaround” projects succeed on honest conversations and proper collaboration. Start with deadlines in mind – but be prepared to flex for a “job done right”. Don’t come to us with a request for “quick and dirty” – we’re not that kind of agency.
5. Keeping Brand Trackers (and cSat) Fresh and Relevant
“How do we keep trackers fresh and relevant?”. There’s a host of other aspirational objectives we could use here – exciting, inspiring, pertinent. Trackers need emotional as well as monetary investment. They need newness, to move with the times. They need to predict as well as report. Unfortunately, many annual brand tracking research programmes and customer satisfaction trackers were designed for a more stable world. Many markets are moving faster than the old tracking cycles can handle.
If this resonates with you:
- Keep reviewing your trackers. Fresh eyes often add impetus.
- Where possible, integrate behavioural and transactional data
- Focus. Consider contextual modules rather than bloated 20min+ surveys.
- Explore new territories – be that category entry points (CEP) for brand tracking or considering actual, as well as intended advocacy in CX programmes.
- Add strict slide limits to the reports focusing only on what matters.
- Consider tracking less frequently – and invest some of that saved cash in diagnosing the actual problem rather than waiting for another data point on a line chart.
The goal isn’t about finding more metrics. It’s about better ones. Mental market share; mental advantage metrics. Very much the new currency in brand tracking. Actual advocacy and the all important trust in CX. Whilst it’s more difficult, don’t disregard creating indices that cover a number of metrics. If it helps tell a better story, it’s a better metric.
6. Data Fragmentation and Integration
Many client side teams describe being data-rich but insight-poor. They have more sources than ever – CRM. Loyalty. Social. Reviews. Sales. App data. Web analytics. Survey data. Maybe even an ongoing online community or panel. But… often siloed and / or owned by different functions.
Here’s what we’ve seen help in other organisations:
- Cross-functional data governance.
- Fewer dashboards, more synthesis.
- Insight teams clearly positioned as the integrators, not just survey managers.
Organisations that integrate their data turn information into leverage. Those that don’t keep paying for data they never fully use.
7. AI: Opportunity or Anxiety?
It’s 2026, so of course AI is on the agenda. Clients want to better understand how AI can be used – not just as a means of addressing some of the problems outlined here, but as an opportunity for curating difference-making insight. The application of AI for market and competitor intelligence is, however, a double-edged sword for many. It represents opportunity and induces anxiety. It’s both a capability opportunity and a political minefield. Questions we’ve heard include “Where does AI genuinely add value?”, “What could / should be automated?” and “What does this mean for team skills?”.
Mustard’s in-house AI expert (and MRS Hero of 2025) Anthony Shephard-Williams has clear points of view and solid advice to offer in regards to client-side use of AI. Including:
- Treat governance as a strategic issue, not a compliance afterthought.
- Human judgment has become the premium skill.
- Remember the competitive lens: It’s not about using AI, it’s about using it better than your competitors.
- Find clear use-case identification (not AI for AI’s sake) and adopt practical experimentation.
- Upskill teams without threatening their professional identity.
The competitive advantage won’t come from simply having access to AI tools; those are increasingly commoditised. It will come from how effectively teams integrate AI into their workflows, decision-making, and strategic influence. The future insight function is not smaller; it is sharper, faster, and more commercially embedded. AI is not the end of expertise, it is the accelerant.
8. Strategic Alignment for Insight Leaders
Whilst facing up to all of the challenges already mentioned, being on the front foot from a strategic perspective – and being proactive, rather than reactive – becomes a challenge in itself. We’ve heard clients talk honestly about the challenge of aligning insights with broader organisational strategy.
But senior leaders need proactive, strategic foresight be that future trend identification, scenario planning or exploration and understanding of cultural shifts or emerging behaviour changes (within or outside the category).
This feels harder to proffer lots of practical advice on, except to say:
- Protect that “futures” insight with your lives! Or at least ensure that it’s embedded in your annual planning cycles.
- Give clear ownership of foresight within the team but share the responsibility for fresh perspectives.
- Continue to position insight leaders as strategic advisors and the voice of the future, not just research buyers (or the voice of the customer).
9. Choosing and Managing the Right Research Agency Partners
Well, here’s a research agency telling you how to choose (and manage) the right research agency partner. Lols. That said, finding the best agency for the correct task is not a trivial challenge for client-side researchers.
In reality, client-side researchers need to have a roster (whether formalised or not) of trusted partners. Specialists. Generalists. Faster-turnaround suppliers. Deep thinkers. Activation specialists. Sector or method experts. Technical whizzes. And they need partners who understand your goals, culture, internal politics and commercial realities.
Without wanting to teach egg-sucking:
- Clients and their agencies have to commit to long-term partnerships, not transactional commissioning. It’s worth the (time) investment in the long run (for both parties).
- Take note of the agencies that ask better questions at proposal stage.
- Take note of the teams who’ve been client-side themselves.
Nine challenges – but with a fair amount of crossover.
Another key role of the agency partner is to tell you what this means, to find the patterns in the data, and to provide the “now what” as well as the “so what?”. If you step back, most of these nine challenges fall into three buckets:
- Resource constraints
- Organisational influence
- Increasing complexity
Which is why the role of communities like AURA matters so much. They provide space for insight leaders to compare notes, share tactics, and normalise the fact that these pressures are systemic, not personal failings.
What Client Teams Really Need
As you know, we’re not a fieldwork provider. You don’t need Mustard (or any of our peers) for that. What client teams really need from leading agencies in 2026 is the following:
- Commercially literate partners.
- Agencies that understand internal budget cycles.
- Design and delivery that accounts for time pressure.
- Outputs that work across the organisation (inc. boardrooms).
- Support throughout, including beyond debrief day.
At Mustard, our team includes people who’ve held client-side roles in banking, premier league football, online retail, fashion retail, grocery retail and delivery services. We’ve seen and experienced these challenges first-hand. We’ve defended trackers. We’ve fought for headcount and for ad hoc budget. We get it. And that understanding shapes how we approach everything – from proposal, to design, to delivery, and beyond.
In a world of problems, client-side insight teams don’t need more complexity. They need partners who understand the reality they operate in – and that design and deliver around it.