GWI is a leading global consumer research platform delivering on-demand, actionable insights into the attitudes, behaviours and interests of billions of people across 50+ markets. Powered by a continuously refreshed, anonymised global dataset, GWI enables brands, agencies and media companies to understand audiences, track cultural and behavioural change, and make smarter, faster decisions with confidence.
Many leading sports agencies rely on GWI to power their audience insight, sponsorship analysis and global research reporting projects. Daniel Bradley, Senior Insight Manager at GWI, reveals how a partnership with E-Tabs Bureau Reporting Service transformed their workflow through automation and delivered results at scale.
The Sporting Struggle: Scaling Market Research Reporting
At GWI, sports research rarely means a single survey or a single market. Trackers often span dozens of countries, combining syndicated data with bespoke studies to understand global fan behaviour, sponsorship impact, and commercial opportunity at scale. These projects generate thousands of data points and multiple deliverables, all feeding into decisions that shape sponsorship strategy for the season ahead.
Daniel Bradley from GWI’s Research and Insights team explained that, in sports reporting and sponsorship reporting, time is never on your side. There are only weeks to deliver insight that proves value and informs what comes next. “Clubs finish in May or June and by August everything needs to be decided.” This gave GWI a very short window to deliver accurate, data-driven reports to clients.
Over time, it became clear that the existing manual approach to reporting was no longer sustainable. Reporting was evolving from a necessary final step into a “bottleneck” that risked slowing down the entire insight delivery process. GWI’s Research and Insights team reached a turning point. To keep pace with growing demand, increasing data complexity and tighter timelines, they needed to rethink how reporting was delivered and begin exploring a more scalable, efficient solution.
“We’d identified early on that the area we were going to struggle with most was what was proposed delivering the sponsorship performance reports.”
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
E-Tabs: The Essential Report Automation Partner
For GWI, E-Tabs’ Report Automation quickly became integral to their workflow, first proven through a large-scale football sponsorship study across multiple markets. The project demonstrated how automation transformed sponsorship performance reporting, their most complex and time-intensive output, through live data-driven charts and scalable templates that delivered consistency at scale.
Over the 3 to 4 month reporting period, this shift had a significant impact. Daniel estimates that, “without E-Tabs, the workload would have exceeded 1000 hours.” Instead, the team were able to deliver within tight timeframes while saving a substantial amount of analyst time, streamlining delivery and reducing operational pressure.
“The reality is that if we’d had to do that ourselves, it would have been somewhat impossible within the time frames that we had.”
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
Global Scale with Enterprise Report Automation
E-Tabs’ Enterprise report automation proved invaluable again on a second major project for a global basketball association. The brief involved analysing fan behaviour, merchandising engagement and brand health tracking across 36 markets, with different surveys targeting different demographics.
The outputs were substantial: 25 automated PowerPoint reports, many running to 60 slides, alongside 36 automated infographics, all required within a tight 2 to 3 week reporting window. As Daniel explained, it would have taken a full team of analysts, “it would have taken my entire team of around eighteen people, to even scratch the surface of getting them done within that timeframe.”
By relying more heavily on E-Tabs for both PowerPoint reporting automation and infographic automation, Daniel added, “GWI saved an estimated 90 hours on infographic production and more than 375 hours on report creation alone.” What could have consumed weeks of analyst time through manual charting was delivered within days using automated reporting tools.
“The E-Tabs automated PowerPoints were a beast. Without them, it would have been pretty much impossible to do this in-house.”
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
Benefits Beyond Speed: Accuracy Through Automated Reporting
Whilst time-savings from report automation were significant, the benefits went far beyond speed. Automated reporting gave GWI a renewed confidence in data accuracy and quality control.
Automation dramatically reduced manual proofing and human error. With automated outputs handling charts, layouts, updates and data visualisation consistently, the team could trust the results without repeatedly checking every slide. Daniel explained that, “Once the initial checks were done and we knew the data was pulling correctly, we were confident the rest of the reports would be fine.” This dramatically reduced the need for manual proofing.
“We always do spot checks as part of the process. We never found any issues with the data population. This saves us a lot of time because we have that confidence that everything will be accurate.”
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
When Clients Change Their Minds: Agile Report Automation
Automation also transformed how GWI handled client feedback – an unavoidable part of research delivery. Daniel emphasised that, “We knew there were going to be additional requests coming in, so everything we could do beforehand was going to save us time later.”
Narrative tweaks, late changes and additional data requests no longer required rebuilding slides manually. With automated PowerPoint reporting, updates could be reprocessed and delivered within the same day. “This gave us confidence we were able to deliver changes in a timely fashion.”
“Even more complex changes were usually turned around within a day or two at most.“
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
The Competitive Advantage of E-Tabs Automation
Today, Daniel and his team see automated reporting as a competitive advantage, not just an operational fix. It allows GWI to compete confidently against larger agencies, commit to ambitious RFPs and maintain both quality assurance and analyst wellbeing. Automation has changed the pressure dynamics within the team, particularly during peak summer delivery periods, where reporting demands often coincided with annual leave and created resourcing risk at critical moments.
As Daniel explains, “we know that, no matter what the kind of reporting demands are, we’re able to at least outsource the most time-consuming elements to a third party.”
“Automation lets us be agile and reliable at the same time. Our analysts can focus on insight and storytelling, not manual charting.”
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
Built on Trust, Not Transactions: Long-Term Reporting Automation
That reliability is why GWI continues to partner with E-Tabs across formats, global markets and enterprise reporting projects. The combination of dependable automated delivery and consultative support ensures that research reporting remains accurate, scalable and efficient.
“I haven’t come across a reporting format yet that E-Tabs haven’t been able to help us with. Whenever we’ve hit a technical challenge, they’ve helped us find a better way, often saving us weeks of work.”
Daniel Bradley
Senior Insight Manager, GWI
Ready to transform your reporting workflow? Get in touch with us today to discover how automation can help your team work faster, scale smarter and spend less time building reports and more time delivering insight.
