A Global Apparel Company Delivers on Actionable Insights with a Dedicated Team Model

A global apparel and footwear company leverages an innovative version of staff augmentation from Escalent. See how a dedicated team model keeps projects and workstreams humming along while freeing up the core team to focus on the strategic priorities of their stakeholders.

Corporate market research and insights teams across industries are in a staffing conundrum. Some headlines are signaling to keep on hiring. It’s still a tight labor market. Better staff up. And yet, another set of headlines is advocating the opposite. Against an unsettling macroeconomic backdrop, rising interest rates, waning consumer confidence and geopolitical instability, why risk the investment involved in hiring, onboarding and training new staff? The Tech sector is already seeing major corporate hiring freezes. Will consumer goods and retail be next? Amid uncertainty, it can be hard to know how to build an insights team that works for what you need, both now and next.

One thing we do know is that in times of uncertainty, the need for timely, actionable insights will go up. Retail and consumer insights teams will be asked to deliver more and move faster for their stakeholders. At the same time, stakeholder priorities will be in continual flux as the future unfolds. Quality flexible staffing becomes pivotal in the age of the perpetual pivot.

Escalent provides a unique model of support for those consumer research and insights superheroes who bend over backward to support their stakeholders. They have their stakeholders’ backs. And we have theirs. With dedicated teams. It’s our innovative version of staff augmentation as a managed service.

Staff Augmentation as a Managed Service Combines Durability with Flexibility

Escalent’s Staff Augmentation model is not your typical market research outsourcing. Instead, ours is a fully managed service where clients have a consistent dedicated team of seasoned researchers and analysts who are fully dedicated to their business and a single point of contact to manage all requests.

Having a dedicated team means those team members learn with our clients, build durable institutional knowledge, learn to predict needs, and effectively act as an extension of the client’s core team. At the same time, we know priorities change. Our staff augmentation model is flexible and allows clients to add more team members temporarily during surge times or for extended periods for special projects. Our model also allows clients to dial down support when needs subside. Built-in flexibility means you avoid the risk of increasing headcount in the face of too many unknown variables. But you still boost bandwidth which frees up your core team to be the strategic leaders you hired them to be.

How a Major Apparel Retailer Leverages Dedicated Teams Across Divisions

For one of our key consumer retail accounts with multiple brands under its umbrella of companies, Escalent manages several dedicated teams working across a variety of projects and divisions of the company.

Divisions utilize their dedicated teams in different ways. Often our clients have specific projects that teams are brought in on, involving data analytics, market intelligence, trend studies, report writing, or general project management assistance. In addition, teams are commonly established for special projects, annual leave, or when a division needs an ongoing trusted partner.

Regardless, Escalent’s dedicated teams will step in as extensions of their teams, taking on what is needed with little direction, with projects and workstreams led by a single point of contact to make everything easy. The outcome is a strong ongoing partnership between our companies.

Interested in learning more about Escalent’s dedicated team model? Find out more in our Guide to Boosting Bandwidth & Winning Back Time with staff augmentation services. Your stakeholders will thank you.