Market Intelligence Company

What is Market Intelligence?

Market Intelligence is a process by which all such information relevant to a company’s markets is gathered and analyzed to support and make better decisions.

To be successful, a company must know its market inside and out. With this insight, companies are able to rapidly launch products or services, determine profitable customer segments, adjust pricing, evaluate the supply chain and distribution channels, and make many other important decisions.

While Market Intelligence as a concept is intuitive and straightforward, the effort behind it is complex and never-ending.

When is Market Intelligence used?

MI is often used when a company is seeking to enter a new market or expand into an existing market.

A simple 2×2 matrix offers a helpful visual aid:

Depending upon which of the four cells are checked, the direction and requirements of the process should fall into place.

How is Market Intelligence conducted?

MI should always start with a clear set of objectives followed by a set of questions whose answers will guide users to take appropriate actions. Questions should ideally be asked only if one has already thoughtfully considered how each answer will inform a decision.

Here is an example of objectives and sample questions.

• Opportunities
  • Are there any unmet needs in the market?
  • Do alternative products or services exist?
  • Is the market national or global in scope?
  • What is the current size of the market?
  • What is the estimated growth of the market?
  • What, if any, cross-marketing opportunities are there?
• Threats
  • What can derail your goals?
• Trends
  • What is new that might impact success?
• Current and potential competitors
  • Who are they, and who might they be?
• New suppliers or distributors
  • Is there a need for alternative sources?
  • Who and where are they?
• Customers
  • Will they be the same, or include new prospects?
  • What price points are or will be acceptable?
• Entry and penetration strategies
  • What will they be, and how will they differ from current ones?

Market Intelligence Approaches

Once objectives have been clarified and agreed upon, a plan may be mapped out to best combine information-gathering tools with a method for integrating and analyzing the findings.

• Secondary Research: Readily available public sources, such as news articles, press releases, financial statements, and even employment or real estate postings, can provide a useful starting point with an overview of the market, trends, key companies, and individuals.
• Social Media and Big Data: These are gaining popularity as additional sources of information that may be incorporated into an overall market analysis, although it may be a challenge to determine how to extract meaning from them.
• Conferences and Trade Shows: These offer fertile ground for quickly gaining insights into a market, competitors, customer needs, and trends.
• Business Intelligence (BI), Competitive Intelligence (CI), and Market Research (MR): These often overlap and may be used concurrently with MI to gain a fuller picture of the market, its major players and competition, and potential customers.
  • Business Intelligence tends to involve internally collected data, such as sales, production, and budgets, while Competitive Intelligence focuses externally on specific competitors, and Market Research focuses on customers and the market environment.

Managing Market Intelligence

Keeping track of all the information included in market intelligence can become time-consuming and overwhelming.

• Having a set of priorities combined with rules or filters can organize and reduce information overload, making it more manageable.
• Software and online tools exist to help you gather, analyze, and store your market intelligence. It is often worth outsourcing certain tasks to a third-party firm that can handle these requirements and provide unbiased feedback regarding optimal actions to take.
  • Several outside firms provide tools for Market Research, Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, and Market Intelligence, allowing you to oversee these activities. These firms can be useful in both gathering and analyzing information.
  • Experienced companies can also help ensure that you and your colleagues have considered all the important information you need and established a framework for integrating it.
• Having a high quality and quantity of information is not enough. Skillful analysis is important to transform it into intelligence that forms the foundation of optimal decisions.