Status Quo vs. Potential Impact of Market & Competitive Intelligence - Ask the Questions!

How to become able to see more of what’s all around you so you can take better decisions about what just happened, what’s likely to happen next, and what to do about it. In a structured, efficient and most likely effective (impacting) way? This catalogue of questions will not only prepare you for the first big picture but it might excite you and your peers right from the start. By answering these questions you will also become aware of hot spots and issues pretty quickly. Addressing them with decision makers as improvement potential along with resolution suggestions might grant you the first home run in the long game of setting up your company's Market & Competitive Intelligence function.

I recommend: 

Preparing for a step change of an entire organization is to be taken very seriously. The more professional you work, the more support you could gather early on, the more hard facts you can present if questions arsise, the more easier you can create and enjoy buy-in further down the road.
 
Ask these vital questions, first yourself, record intermediate suggestions and resulting, additional questions and concerns and go work through the extended catalogue with peers and managers of your trust:

1. Determine Demand
What do we need to know in order to make decisions?
How will this information be used?
What questions or problems will it help us solve?
Who needs the information?

2. Intelligence Supply
How do we gather data?
What are the reporting and analytical processes?

3. Application, Implementation
What do you do differently as a result of this information?
What type of value can we achieve from using this information?

Furthermore, gap-analyze this demand/supply situation and identify goals.

Potential Benefits of Market & Competitive Intelligence - Sell it early to create buy-in!

After recognizing and fine-tuning the potential impact for your company or organization it is time to flesh out clear benefits to start creating buy-in. Don’t underestimate the motivational impact of professional intelligence, easily digestible and transformed into actionable sales goals settings and marketing target developments. Your sales force and marketing staff will be thrilled with excitement if opportunities become transparent on a constant basis. Therefore your benefits need to be "sold" with very clear resolution path ways being made visible. You can only create strong buy-in when benefit are recognized in context with solutions that everyone can follow.

I recommend: Develop a list of future stakeholders for the Market & Competitive Intelligence function. Ask yourself for potential benefits of the results of this function.

Study published material, via intelligence associations or literature on the topic and pick general benefits that apply to your organization.

A short list of top level benefits could look like this:

- Identification of new opportunities - e.g. identify new trends before our markets and competitors.
- Early warning of competitor moves - enable counter measures.
- Minimizing investment risks - detect threats and trends early on.
- Better customer interaction - inherit intensified customer market view.
- Better market selection & positioning - understand where your offer fits and discover untapped or under-served potential.
- Quicker, more efficient and cost-effective information - avoid duplication of report acquisitions and expensive consultant work.

Develop such a list for any target group with details that deepen the understanding.

Goals for a Market & Competitive Intelligence Function - Benefits Translated

As with any other objective, if benefits are clearly based on real requirements it should be fairly straight forward to define the goals: simply by translating benefits into them. Improve competitiveness - Right info at the right time in the right format. Intelligence can make all the difference of winning or losing in the market place. Speed and simplicity will help marketers and sales staff to move in hard on the competition by not only predicting but acting consciously and aggressively on the competitor’s and customer's moves. Increase efficiency - Avoid long searching, offer quick finding. Readily available intelligence, disseminated through standard tools and processes provide speed and promote utilization of market & competitive intelligence. Safe cost - Stop multiple report and consultancy service acquisitions. Larger , global organizations experience this all the time if there is no transparency established. Follow the recommendations below to define more goals.

I recommend: A more complete list of goals for Market & Competitive Intelligence is located here. Don't forget to develop your own goals though, again: based on the benefits that you should identify with current and future stakeholders.

These could include the following goals:
- Cost savings through efficient use of intelligence (avoiding search)
- Cost savings through increased risk/damage control
- Cost savings through globally managed reports acquisition, avoiding duplication
- Cost savings through avoidance of multiple intelligence tasks
- Productivity increase through reduction of material to be consumed and increased user-friendliness / standardization
- Sales increase through improved customer call preparations
- Revenue increase through sales loss avoidance
- Increased profitability through early adoption to new market opportunities (early market access, created markets justify higher margins)

Implementing the Market & Competitive Intelligence Function - Steb-by-Step

Every business process, tool or structure can only deliver benefits and value when properly implemented. Market & Competitive Intelligence processes and tools are no different and thus a great deal of resource and effort is to be allocated to the preparation and the actual process of implementation. Most important considerations to come clear with are: - Success Factors of the Market Intelligence Unit - Market Intelligence User Identification - Intelligence Requirement Gathering - Intelligence Gap Analysis - Intelligence Sourcing Strategy - Intelligence Policies, Standards - Piloting of Intelligence Systems & Depositories - Market Inteligence Tools & Process Roll-Out - Promotion of Intelligence Systems Having clear implementation in mind all these considerations should be worked on in great detail, preferrably with an established functional or virtual intelligence team that either represents or even runs the Market & Competitive Intelligence function.

I recommend: There is much more detail to the implementation preparation as described before. This guide is supposed to provide a head start on all the different angles you would have to consider.

A way more complete guide for Market & Competitive Intelligence units and interactive forums and blogs for intelligence professionals is available at my web site at MarkIntell.com.

Working in a leading role as a Market & Competitive Intelligence professional it is my utmost motivation to bring counter parts and peers, intelligence professionals of all sorts together and collectively grow on the demanding discipline of establishing and running a Market & Competitive Intelligence unit or function.

For much more detail and practical examples of the implementation steps tunr to the MarkIntell.com Implementation Guide.