Planning season may be essential for long-term business success, but for internal insights teams, it can feel like a race against the clock. As companies prepare for a new fiscal year, demand for market research support grows rapidly. Every department – from marketing to product development – is looking for up-to-date consumer insights to inform their strategies. Unfortunately, internal teams often lack the bandwidth to handle this sudden spike in demand.

Multiple Projects, Tight Deadlines

One of the biggest challenges during the annual planning cycle is volume. Internal teams are asked to deliver insights for multiple stakeholders, often with overlapping deadlines. Even highly capable, well-structured insights departments can struggle to juggle these requests effectively. With limited team members and a finite number of hours, priorities compete – and hard trade-offs must be made.

Limited Flexibility and Specialized Skills

Internal resources are purpose-built for ongoing business needs, not necessarily short bursts of intensive work. And while they may excel in core areas, planning season sometimes calls for specialized expertise – such as segmentation strategy, concept testing, or global market analysis – that not every team has in-house. Hiring full-time staff to fill these temporary gaps can be lengthy and expensive, and bringing on agencies may require long ramp-up periods and contracts that extend far beyond planning needs.

Bottlenecks Reduce Impact

The unfortunate result of these pressures is often delay or dilution. Key insights might arrive too late to guide decision-making, or not be delivered at all – limiting the business’s ability to make informed strategic choices. When insights teams are stretched too thin, their work becomes reactive instead of proactive, and the business risks missing opportunities or overlooking problems.

Common challenges internal teams face during planning season:

• Overlapping demands from multiple departments
• Insufficient staff to manage the spike in research requests
• Limited access to specialized research skill sets
• Delays due to bandwidth or analysis bottlenecks
• Difficulty keeping up with desired depth or quality of insights

In short, planning season stretches internal insights teams thin – not because they aren’t capable, but because they’re asked to do too much in too little time, often without the flexibility or resources to scale up when it matters most.

When timelines are tight and workloads spike, On Demand Talent offers a powerful solution to help internal teams get ahead – and stay there. These experienced insights professionals can be deployed quickly to fill gaps in capacity, provide specialized expertise, or run individual research projects from start to finish. Unlike full-time hires or traditional consultants, On Demand Talent brings the flexibility, speed, and focus teams need most during planning season.

Quick Deployment, High Impact

One of the biggest benefits of On Demand Talent is speed. While hiring new employees or onboarding an external agency can take months, On Demand Talent can often be matched and activated in days or weeks. This allows organizations to respond in real time to planning needs – without sacrificing research quality or drowning internal teams in additional work.

For example, imagine an insights team that’s been tasked with running brand perception research, updating consumer personas, and evaluating new product claims – all within a six-week window. By layering in a temporary research professional specialized in claims testing or brand health tracking, the team can maintain momentum and deliver actionable results within the timeline. (Fictional scenario for illustrative purposes.)

Specialized Skills Without the Long-Term Commitment

Another advantage is access to expertise. On Demand Talent includes seasoned professionals with backgrounds in qualitative, quantitative, strategic, and operational insights work. Whether you need someone who can manage complex global studies or someone with sector-specific experience (like CPG, retail, or health and wellness), On Demand Talent offers a targeted way to fill those roles – temporarily, but effectively.

How On Demand Talent Supports Planning Season

• Boosts internal capacity during intense planning windows
• Provides niche expertise not always available in-house
• Speeds up project timelines without onboarding delays
• Fills temporary research support needs without long-term risk
• Supports strategic decision-making with fresh, objective insights

Unlike freelancers who may lack enterprise experience, or consultants who come with long contracts and big budgets, On Demand Talent offers a middle ground: high-caliber talent that’s available when you need it, for exactly the amount of time you need it. It’s a strategic way to proactively scale insights resources during planning – and reduce the burnout and bottlenecks that hold back so many internal teams during the most important part of the year.

By supplementing internal teams with project-based insights talent, businesses stay agile and responsive during planning season – without overcommitting resources or compromising on the depth and quality of their consumer insights.

Annual planning season often surfaces tough questions related to consumers, competitors, and category trends. But even the most skilled internal insights teams may not always have deep expertise in every sub-category or skill set required. This is where On Demand Talent offers a unique advantage—by delivering highly specialized professionals who can immediately fill those knowledge gaps without long onboarding or training periods.

Unlike permanent team members who may have broader experience across a few areas, On Demand Talent professionals are often seasoned experts in a particular methodology, audience segment, market, or vertical. Whether your company faces a need for shopper insights, innovation research, global market comparisons, or quant/qual integration, ODT professionals are matched to your precise needs. They’ve already led similar initiatives and know how to get to the answers fast.

Why These Skills Matter During Planning Season

Planning timelines are tight and decisions are high impact. There’s no room for trial and error when leaders are counting on insights to shape priorities for the coming year. Specialized experts provide valuable clarity by offering:

• Category-level knowledge: Deep understanding of niche markets or consumer segments you may be targeting next year
• Advanced capabilities: Experience with specific tools or methods like segmentation studies, journey mapping, or shopper analytics
• Objective outside-in thinking: A fresh perspective from someone not rooted in internal assumptions or status quo processes

For example, let’s say a CPG brand is expanding into the natural wellness space. While the internal insights team is strong in mainstream grocery, they may lack hands-on experience with emerging direct-to-consumer brands or health-conscious consumers. A fictional scenario: by bringing in an ODT professional with experience working for wellness startups, the team gains instant insight into buyer motivations and trends traditionally outside their wheelhouse – enabling faster, more confident decisions.

Ultimately, the benefits of On Demand Talent vs internal teams in this scenario lie in depth and speed. You don’t need to hire or train new staff or depend on internal cross-functional learning curves. Instead, you get plug-and-play insights support that’s specialized, strategic, and ready to add value immediately.

One of the biggest hurdles internal insights teams face during planning season is the ability to flex their resources quickly. Strategic planning often triggers a surge in research needs—competitive scans, consumer deep dives, white-space exploration—all within a short timeframe. With limited headcount and a fixed budget, scaling a full-time team on short notice is not always feasible.

This is where On Demand Talent shines. ODT professionals provide temporary market research support that flexes with your project load, helping you meet deadlines without stretching your team thin. They can be onboarded in days or weeks—not months like conventional hiring—and are fully vetted, experienced professionals ready to jump in and contribute from day one.

Support When and How You Need It

Unlike long-term hires or traditional research agencies, ODT allows organizations to scale their consumer insights support up or down depending on demand. That means more agility, less red tape, and faster execution. Common use cases during planning season include:

• Short-term capacity boosts: Got three strategic initiatives due at once? Add temporary talent for consumer insights teams to meet the deadline without burnout.
• Specialty roles without long-term commitment: Need a segmentation expert or someone with multi-market experience for a specific initiative?
• Project-based insights talent: Match the right expert to a one-off project—without going through hiring or lengthy agency contracts.

For example, a fictional Fortune 500 company might need to explore Gen Z’s digital shopping habits for an innovation track. Their internal team knows the brand’s legacy consumer well, but lacks deep hands-on experience with emerging TikTok trends, influencer follow patterns, or mobile-first UX expectations. Calling on an ODT professional with a digital-first research background enables them to expand their knowledge rapidly—without pulling internal resources from other critical tasks.

In short, On Demand Talent brings the type of flexible, scalable resource that internal teams often wish they had—but can’t activate fast enough within traditional org structures. There’s no backlog of HR approvals, no ramp time, and no compromise in expertise. Just the help you need, when you need it.

Knowing when to bring in On Demand Talent can be the difference between a sprint that empowers strategic decisions and one that overwhelms your internal team. While every company is different, certain patterns and pain points are clear signals that it may be time to explore external insights support.

Key Moments to Leverage On Demand Talent

If you’re asking yourself any of the following questions, you may be ready to supplement your internal insights team:

• “We need this research fast—how can we meet the deadline without burning out the team?”
• “We’re entering a new market or category—do we have the right know-how?”
• “We’re short on internal bandwidth and can’t afford to delay planning decisions.”
• “We need fresh thinking—someone who isn’t too close to the day-to-day business.”

These questions often come up during strategic planning, when internal teams juggle multiple requests with high executive visibility. But they also arise throughout the year during periods of transformation, new product development, or when an unexpected research question appears.

Another triggering scenario may be team changes. If a valuable team member transitions out, leaves unexpectedly, or takes extended leave, an On Demand Talent expert can fill the gap while preserving workflow continuity and quality. ODT provides a unique alternative to freelance platforms or large agencies by offering fractional insights experts who are curated based on your exact needs—and who are ready to contribute immediately.

Still unsure if you need help? The best time to consider ODT support is before your team hits a breaking point. If you’re already swamped with requests, planning deliverables, and lost weekends, the time to act is now. Filling insights gaps during planning time isn’t just a nice-to-have—it ensures smarter business decisions, backed by the capacity and confidence to execute them.