Strengthening Your Foundation

This post was originally featured in the May 14th, 2025 newsletter found here: INBOX INSIGHTS, May 14, 2025: Strengthening Your Foundation, Ethics in AI

Strengthening Your Foundation

I was taking a strength class over the weekend where the instructor kept emphasizing one key point: your foundation is always supporting you. For example, even when you think you’re just working your arms, your core and legs are quietly doing the heavy lifting. Neglect that foundation (aka skipping leg day) and you’re setting yourself up for injury. As she explained this, I couldn’t help but see the perfect parallel to what I’m always telling you about business.

It hit me that this is EXACTLY what happens in organizations when they rush to implement new technology without checking if their foundations can support it.

Yikes. What a setup for a post about the 5Ps. You’re welcome.

The Foundation Isn’t Sexy – But It’s Essential

Let’s be honest. Working on your company’s foundation isn’t the glamorous part of business. Nobody’s rushing to LinkedIn to post about how they spent six months documenting processes or organizing their data architecture. Besides me, that is. We all want to jump to the exciting stuff—implementing AI, launching new products, and announcing big wins.

I get it. I’ve been there too. At my previous company, they pushed to implement a fancy new analytics platform because our competitors were using it. They were so focused on the shiny capabilities that they completely ignored our foundation. The result? We spent a fortune on a system nobody could use properly because our data was disorganized, our team lacked training, and our processes were inconsistent.

It was an expensive lesson.

How can we do better?

Using the 5Ps to Audit Your Foundation

Before you integrate any new technology (especially something as transformative as generative AI), you need to know what you’re working with. This is where the 5Ps framework comes in:

1. Purpose: Why are you implementing this technology? What specific business problems will it solve? In my experience, many companies adopt new tech because “everyone else is doing it” rather than with clear objectives.
2. People: Do you have the right skills on your team? Is there a plan for training? What does this mean for your customers? Yes, you need to think about your external people, not just the internal ones.
3. Process: Have you documented how work gets done now? Where will the new technology fit in? Process documentation isn’t exciting, but it’s where you’ll catch potential issues before they become expensive problems.
4. Platforms: What systems do you already have? How will they integrate with new technology? That messy tech stack you’ve been ignoring? It’s about to become very relevant.
5. Performance: How will you measure success? What metrics matter? Without this, you’ll never know if your investment was worthwhile.

You can get your copy of the 5P Framework here

The Ongoing Work of Foundation Building

Here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: your foundation isn’t something you build once and forget about. It requires ongoing maintenance, especially as you integrate new technologies.

When we first started exploring AI at Trust Insights, we made the mistake of assuming our existing data governance would be sufficient. It wasn’t. We quickly realized we needed to revisit our data quality standards, privacy protocols, and documentation practices.

So what does ongoing foundation work look like when you’re integrating something like generative AI?

• Regular process audits to identify what’s working and what’s not
• Continuous skills development for your team (this technology moves FAST)
• Iterative improvements to your data infrastructure
• Periodic review of use cases and performance metrics
• Documentation that evolves as your implementation matures

The Cost of Skipping Foundation Work

I recently spoke with a marketing director who deployed an AI content generation tool across her team without doing any foundational work. Six months later, they had inconsistent outputs, duplicate content issues, and serious brand voice problems. The technology worked exactly as designed – but without the foundation to support it, the results were chaotic.

The cost wasn’t just financial. Team morale suffered, client deliverables were delayed, and they ultimately had to pause the entire initiative to go back and do the foundational work they should have started with.

Your Action Plan

If you’re considering implementing generative AI (or any new technology), here’s a practical way to approach your foundational work:

1. Start with an honest assessment: Use the 5Ps to audit where you are today. Be brutally honest about your weaknesses.
2. Prioritize foundation gaps: You can’t fix everything at once. Which elements of your foundation will most impact your success with the new technology?
3. Create a foundation roadmap: Foundation building happens alongside implementation, not before it. Map out how you will strengthen your foundation as you roll out new technology.
4. Allocate real resources: Foundation work requires time, budget, and attention. If you’re not willing to invest in it, you might want to reconsider your technology plans.
5. Measure foundation health: Just like tracking business outcomes, create metrics to measure the health of your foundation over time.

Remember that strength instructor I mentioned? She reminded us that even professional athletes still do foundational exercises. The foundational work never stops—it just becomes more integrated into how you operate.

What foundational elements is your organization neglecting? Reply to this email to tell me, or join the conversation in our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers.

Reply to this email to tell me, or come join the conversation in our free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.