Inaugural Geshido Insights Awards spotlight KFC Africa, RCL Foods, MultiChoice and Santam
The awards were presented at the fourth annual GeshidoCon in Johannesburg, an event that brought together more than 500 C-suite leaders, executives, technology leaders and transformation teams focused on driving change within modern organisations.
The inaugural awards recognise businesses that are going beyond collecting data and producing research to demonstrate how insights can influence decisions, change actions and deliver measurable impact.
“Geshido means to Get Sh!t Done, and across all four winning organisations — operating in different sectors and facing very different business challenges — one pattern was clear: they made insight matter,” said Tshepo Moila, partner at iqbusiness.
“We saw the same journey play out in different ways: from insight to decision, from decision to action, and from action to impact.”
KFC Africa: turning research history into a strategic asset
In the Retail category, KFC Africa was recognised for finding new value in a decade of customer research.
The business has tested more than 100 concepts annually over the past 10 years, accumulating approximately 5.6 million customer evaluations and more than 100 million data points.
Working with the iqbusiness Insights team, KFC Africa analysed this historical research to identify consistent drivers of customer behaviour and choice over time.
The result is a more strategic approach to concept development, allowing the business to prioritise promising ideas earlier, identify weaker concepts faster and focus research investment where it can have the greatest value.
“Instead of looking at each new concept afresh, this rich data was analysed to understand the consistent primary drivers of customer behaviour and choice over time,” said Mateena Naidoo, head of research at KFC Africa.
“On this basis, we’re now able to prioritise stronger concepts earlier, screen out weaker ideas faster, invest research where it matters and ultimately make faster, smarter decisions.”
RCL Foods: making consumer intelligence a competitive advantage
RCL Foods was the Manufacturing & FMCG category winner, recognised for developing consumer and market intelligence capabilities to strengthen brand and business decision-making.
The company has focused on closing knowledge gaps and building a deeper understanding of changing consumer and shopper needs in categories where market uncertainty can make growth decisions more difficult.
The approach has supported innovation, strategic decision-making and brand development, with the company's work in the pet category showcased as part of the awards.
“Too often we want to jump straight to the answers, but you first need to build the right foundations,” said Victoria Laval, consumer market insights (CMI) executive at RCL Foods.
“Every data point, insight and learning has strengthened our understanding of our categories and brands and over time these foundations became our competitive advantage and maintains our relevance with consumers.”
MultiChoice: translating customer pain points into action
MultiChoice Group won the Telco & Media category for using customer insights to identify specific improvements across its customer journey.
Operating across multiple African markets means the group has to account for different customer needs and experiences. Its Voice of the Customer (VoC) framework helped translate those varied experiences into clearer priorities for the business.
The insights enabled MultiChoice to move beyond identifying customer pain points to determining where intervention was needed and what changes would have the greatest impact.
“We knew we needed to make changes and, leveraging the insights generated from our VoC framework supported by the Insights team from iqbusiness, we identified precisely where in the customer journey things needed to improve,” said Yanga Madikizela, VP: Customer Experience and Quality Assurance at MultiChoice Group.
“Critically, the insights also told us exactly what needed to be done.”
Santam: using data to strengthen customer relationships
Santam took the Financial Services & Insurance category for its use of data-led listening to strengthen customer experience, broker relationships and business performance.
The insurer identified a need for a more integrated view of its customer and broker experiences. By bringing stakeholder feedback together with broader data sets, Santam developed an integrated listening capability designed to provide greater clarity around priorities and guide interventions towards areas where they could have the greatest impact.
Its 2024 and 2025 performance trajectory further demonstrates the role of data-led listening in supporting business resilience and broker confidence.
From insight-rich to insight-led
For the inaugural awards, iqbusiness used an invitation-led process across its client portfolio to identify organisations demonstrating how insight had influenced business decisions and subsequent action.
The awards reflect a broader shift in how organisations approach customer and consumer data. While businesses have access to increasingly large volumes of information, the commercial value lies in how effectively that information is translated into decisions.
“These four winners demonstrate something we believe strongly: being insight-rich is not the same as being insight-led,” said Moila.
“The value comes when customer and consumer understanding moves beyond the research team and starts influencing the decisions the organisation makes and the actions it takes.”
The inaugural Geshido Insights Awards therefore place the emphasis not on how much data an organisation collects, but on what it does with what it learns — and whether those insights ultimately change business outcomes.
