Smarter strategy, faster growth
How Sage put insights into action
From AI-driven insights to corporate strategy, we’ve helped Sage put customers at the heart of their biggest business decisions—transforming research into real commercial impact and earning award-winning recognition along the way.
The challenge: Turning customer insights into competitive advantage
Sage had no shortage of customer insights, but those insights weren’t always translating into faster, more confident decision-making across key initiatives.
Like many global brands, they needed a way to ensure customer intelligence was not just collected but actively shaping strategic priorities—from high-level corporate planning to marketing and proposition development.
We worked with Sage to help them apply customer insights more effectively across leadership, marketing, and proposition development—ensuring that teams had a clearer, validated view of what mattered most to their customers.
Services used
The solution: Bringing customer insights into decision-making
We helped Sage move beyond static research reports to make customer intelligence a real-time input into both strategic planning and proposition development.
- Corporate strategy was shaped by deep customer intelligence, with AI market landscaping ensuring that leadership decisions were aligned with real market needs.
- AI-powered Personas gave teams a live view into customer mindsets, helping refine propositions and messaging before going to market.
- Proposition development became more efficient, allowing Sage to focus resources on commercially viable ideas.
By integrating insight more dynamically into their decision-making, Sage gained a clearer, faster path to growth.
Basis & Sage had a huge task, but they made it look easy. They created a multi-country qual and quant study that changed stakeholders’ perception of the value of research.
The impact
- Smarter investment decisions – Sage’s five-year roadmap is now grounded in real customer intelligence, reducing wasted spend on misaligned initiatives.
- Stronger product-market fit – AI Personas helped Sage validate and refine new value propositions, ensuring only the most commercially viable ideas moved forward.
- Faster time-to-market – With an always-on system for testing ideas, Sage teams can refine messaging and strategy earlier, accelerating go-to-market decisions.
- Reduced risk in proposition development – By pressure-testing ideas before launch, Sage minimized costly missteps and improved confidence in new offerings.
- Award-winning recognition – Our work on Sage’s Corporate Strategy won the prestigious MRS 2024 Business Impact of the Year – Global award, recognizing its role in transforming how Sage makes customer-driven decisions.
Jon Cowan Chief of Staff to the CEO, SageThis insight struck a chord with our leadership… It set the customer imperative for our new strategy and evidenced the headroom potential we can capture in our existing categories.
Looking ahead
For billion-dollar brands, customer insights shouldn’t just inform decisions—they should drive them.
Sage now has a structured, scalable approach to applying customer intelligence—ensuring that leadership, marketing, and product teams are aligned on what truly matters to their customers.
This is more than research.
It’s a new way of making decisions.
Cath Keers CMO, SageWe now have a single version of the truth that the business is rallying around. It’s become a north star, and our teams are using the insight daily.
