How insight teams can prioritise research requests and deliver more impact.
By Prithweesh De (Engagement Manager)
If you work in an insights team at a bank or payments company, you’ll know the feeling...
...multiple requests land in your inbox from marketing, product, and strategy, often all at once. Each stakeholder believes their project is critical, and each has a compelling argument for why it should be tackled first.
Sound familiar?
The result, as you’ll likely know all too well, is a constant juggling act where your team risks spreading itself too thin and/or investing time in projects that don’t deliver real strategic impact.
This challenge is more common than many people think - we see it all the time. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a large bank or payment company with a well-established insights function or in a leaner team where resources are tight, the pressure to respond to multiple competing demands is the same.
The difficulty that many teams face isn’t anything to do with effort or capability – they typically have both of those things in abundance. Usually, the challenges all boil down to effective prioritisation (or the lack of it!).
Without a clear way to prioritise requests, insight teams often find themselves:
Chasing urgency over impact – The projects that feel most time-sensitive get attention, even if they’re not the ones that will move the business forward.
Losing strategic focus – Teams spend more time reacting to ad-hoc requests than shaping the big conversations that really matter.
Facing questions on ROI – When the value of insight work isn’t obvious at a business level, teams risk being seen as a service provider rather than a driver of growth.
Over time, the consequences add up. Insight teams can burn out from the constant firefighting. Stakeholders become frustrated when their requests aren’t handled efficiently. And perhaps most importantly, the organisation misses the chance to harness insights for real strategic advantage.
What does a better approach look like?
The good news is that there is a way to break this exhausting cycle. The teams that we have seen have success are the ones who introduce structure into how they handle requests. A strong framework helps with decision-making and gives everyone clarity on how and why certain projects are prioritised. In practice, that means:
1. Clarifying the brief before you begin – Making sure every request has a clear purpose, a defined audience, and an intended action.
2. Checking for strategic alignment – Assessing whether the request supports broader team or business objectives.
3. Confirming what already exists – Reviewing existing insights to prevent duplication and help teams build on past work.
4. Applying a prioritisation scorecard – Scoring requests against agreed criteria to create transparency and consistency in decision-making.
5. Identifying gaps and opportunities – Spotting recurring needs or overlooked areas to shift from a reactive to proactive approach.
The results of getting it right
When insight teams introduce a structured way of prioritising requests, the first and most noticeable benefit is focus. Instead of being pulled in every direction by competing demands, teams can channel their energy into the projects that are most tightly linked to business objectives. This ensures that the work they do directly contributes to the organisation’s strategic direction. Over time, this alignment builds confidence across senior leadership that insights are helping to move the business forward.
A second outcome is the ability to demonstrate value more clearly. When decisions about which projects to take on are based on transparent criteria, stakeholders can see why some requests move ahead and others don’t. This creates a sense of fairness and clarity, and it makes it much easier to show how insights are connected to tangible business outcomes. Instead of being questioned on return-on-investment after the fact, teams can point to the decision-making process itself as proof of rigour and relevance.
Perhaps the most powerful result is the shift in how the insight function is perceived. With a clear approach in place, teams stop being viewed as reactive “order-takers” who simply respond to requests. Instead, they become recognised as proactive partners who help shape the direction of the business. By focusing on the right briefs, at the right time, insight teams can play a decisive role in steering strategy, supporting innovation, and ensuring that decisions are grounded in evidence rather than assumption.
A final thought
Ultimately, the challenge of prioritising research requests is not a reflection of capability, but of process. Without a clear and consistent way to make trade-offs, insight teams risk losing focus, limiting their strategic impact, and being perceived as a reactive support function rather than a driver of business value.
By introducing structure into how requests are assessed - clarifying briefs, checking alignment with business objectives, reviewing existing knowledge, scoring priorities, and identifying gaps - teams can regain control of their workload and ensure their efforts deliver real impact.
📄 To help you do that we've created a research request prioritisation guide, which gives you a clear, repeatable framework for evaluating, challenging, and prioritising research requests.
By using it, you’ll be able to focus your team’s effort where it creates the most impact; when your work is aligned with business goals, free from duplication, and designed to deliver tangible results.