Read our CEO, Ruchika Gupta’s Key Observations from the GRIT 2025 Insights Practice Report
The latest GRIT 2025 Insights Practice Report doesn’t just shed light on the latest industry trends. It confirms what many of us in the insights business have felt for a while: the industry is stepping out of the fast-and-frictionless phase and into something more deliberate. As a sector, it has realized that speed without substance is just noise. What clients are demanding now is clarity, meaning, and real-world relevance.
As I read through this year’s report, a few clear themes emerged. Below are my reflections—not just on what’s trending, but on what it tells us about where we’re going and how we need to lead.
Less Hype, More Purpose
The industry is swiftly and steadily maturing beyond automation and dashboards that dominated every industry conversation over the last few years. The GRIT 2025 Insights Practice Report makes it clear that the obsession with tech for tech’s sake is fading. Technology is no longer the end but the means. The spotlight has shifted to purpose-driven insight: how we use tools to reveal context, emotion, and truth.
At Borderless Access, we’ve always believed that AI should support human thinking—not replace it. That’s why we integrate AI into workflows that are rooted in genuine, verified human responses from our global panels. It’s all about automation that serves strategy.
Clarity Is the New Competitive Edge
The GRIT 2025 Report also reveals a telling pattern: brands are showing signs of fatigue with DIY research. There’s growing recognition that having access to tools isn’t the same as having insight. More organizations are turning back to full-service partners but with different expectations.
For a few years, DIY platforms looked like they might render traditional insight partners obsolete. GRIT 2025 proves otherwise. Full-service research has resurged, because, after all, brands want less chaos. They want integrated support and partners who can bridge tech, strategy, and human context.
Even self-service is being folded into the full-service model as a way to stay close to clients between major projects. We see this ourselves. Clients want flexibility, but they also want to know if someone has a bigger picture in mind.
It was made all the more evident when a global CPG brand came to us to unpack consumer emotions tied to cultural events. We designed a framework that blended derivative quantitative research, immersive qualitative research and AI-powered emotion analysis. This resulted in culturally tuned insights that helped them localize messaging across markets in weeks instead of months.
That’s the kind of clarity brands are looking for. And that’s exactly where the industry is heading.
Overcoming the Sampling Crisis
While AI moves into the mainstream, it’s sampling—one of the most fundamental elements of research—that’s generating new uncertainty. The report calls it the “new Thanos,” and that’s no exaggeration. Authenticity and respondent integrity are under fire, and the tools of the past won’t cut it.
It’s why we’re doubling down on in-house panels, layered verification systems, and machine-learning-driven sampling controls. Trust in the data has to come before any smart analytics can be implemented.
Building the Future: Tech + Talent
One of the strongest signals in the GRIT report is the evolution of talent. Half of insights professionals are reskilling. And they’re not just learning new platforms—they’re rethinking their role in shaping business strategy. Insight teams that once delivered “data” are now expected to deliver direction.
At Borderless Access, we’re investing in that shift. Our teams are being trained across emerging areas like fraud mitigation, adaptive modeling, ML-driven sampling, and behavioral prediction. Because tomorrow’s insight pros will need to be as fluent in AI as they are in human psychology.
We’ve also reengineered our own systems—from survey design to panel behavior forecasting—using AI to strip out friction. But we never let AI lead the way because we’ve always believed that insight isn’t just a dataset, it’s a decision enabler. Interpretation, context, judgment still belongs to people. Smart tools are useless without smart minds behind them. And the better we get at understanding people, the better business gets.
The Answer Lies in Insights That Make Real Impact
What the GRIT 2025 report ultimately makes clear is the real winners will be the ones who strike a balance. Between velocity and depth and between automation and human understanding.
Our team at Borderless Access is not just adapting to that future. We’re contributing to building it too. Every day, we partner with clients to transform complexity into clarity, information into intelligence, and insights into decisions that move businesses forward—with confidence.
© 2025 Borderless Access Pvt Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
