InSites Consulting launches automated research tool for South Africa market

Following its acquisition of local consulting firm Columinate, Belgian market research consultancy InSites Consulting has made its first move in the South African market, with the launch of a new digital platform – designed by Columinate – by the name of Fluent. The new tool facilitates automated research.

Automation has made its way into nearly every sector across the globe, leading to an optimisation of operations on the one hand but the loss of jobs on the other. In South Africa, the desire to innovate prevalent in the business environment has accelerated the impact to automation to a great degree.

In addition to replacing jobs, however, new automated technologies are expected to give rise to a breed of jobs that entail working in collaboration with machines, which requires a new set of talents. One sector where this hybrid can be expected to prevail over a direct loss of jobs is that of research. 

Insights agency Columinate has developed Fluent, a tool that facilitates the integration of automated technology into the research process. In essence the tool automates the more simple functions involved in research, such as data collection, reporting and – in some cases – analysis.

Now, the tool has been launched in the South African market by Belgian market research and consulting firm InSites Consulting, which controls Columinate following a strategic acquisition in October this year. For the moment, the tool has been launched on a testing basis only.

The partial launch is primarily due to the desire from InSites to make further improvements to the tool, specifically through the addition of extra validation mechanisms for the insights drawn as well as for the concepts involved. Following these improvements, the firm will launch the platform for the global market.

Commenting on the launch, Henk Pretorius – who founded Columinate and is now a Managing Partner at InSites Consulting – said, “Fluent is designed to make research more efficient, and extends the digital research benefits of increased speed, lower cost, and higher quality to a new level.”