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A strategic approach to market intelligence
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Focus on value-creating deliverables
There are three distinct types of outcomes from a well-run market intelligence effort: facts, ideas, and opportunities. When done correctly each type of deliverable can be utilized to solve both short and long-term issues.
- Facts – the first deliverable is the facts – just as they are, without internal bias. Establishing the facts, no matter how difficult they may be to acknowledge, is a vital first step to successful problem solving.
- Ideas – based on the fact-based understanding of the market realities you face, your intelligence effort should generate a rich set of ideas for you to consider as part of your strategy. Depending on what you are trying to solve they can encompass innovations related to target markets, product offering, business development strategies, go-to-market options, and any other business model components.
- Opportunities – your intelligence efforts should also deliver a range of short and long-term opportunities. These can take the shape of potential prospects, partners, influencers, or other parties interested in collaborating with you. These opportunities provide a tangible first step to executing the ideas generated above.
Build a market intelligence capability
Reliable, insightful market intelligence does not just happen – it needs dedicated resources and a systematic process, guided by deep strategic thinking. While this can be successfully done in-house, many companies are better served by engaging an external market intelligence partner. Not only will such a firm bring extensive experience, professionalism and insight to your market intelligence efforts, it is often better positioned than an internal team to gather accurate, objective data on customers, competitors and other market players.
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Companies currently face critical challenges. By implementing a strategic approach to market intelligence, companies can achieve immediate short-term improvements in revenue and profitability, and can lay a solid foundation for long-term success.
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Additional resources
Fleisher, Craig S. and Babette E. Bensoussan. Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of the New and Classic Methods.
A comprehensive collection of methods and frameworks for industry, competitive positioning, product line, strategic relationship, and business model analysis, this book is written by two well authors in the market intelligence space. The book focuses on the analysis phase of the overall intelligence process. Fleisher and Bensoussan have co-authored several books in this space including Analysis Without Paralysis: 10 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions, which was published in 2008.
Fuld, Leonard. “Be Prepared” Harvard Business Review, November 2003. (Subscription required)
A short article based on the results from a 2002 survey conducted by the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence. The main findings of the survey alerted the author to the fact two-third of respondents had been surprised by past high-impact events and 97% of those polled did not have an “early warning” system in place. Fuld offers three steps to building a sophisticated early warning system.
Kahaner, Larry. Competitive Intelligence: How to Gather, Analyze, and Use Information to Move Your Business to the Top.
This book outlines the basics of collecting, making sense of, and making decisions based on information collected from your competitors. It clearly lays out introductory elements to create or improve competitive intelligence in your company.
Yoffie, David B. and Mary Kwak. “With Friends Like These: The Art of Managing Complementors” Harvard Business Review, September 2006. (Subscription required)
Yoffie and Kwak focus their 2006 HBR article on making sure companies do not overlook complementors, companies that sell complementary products and services, when formulating strategy. In essence, complementors’ products increase the value of your offering to mutual customers. Because of inherent conflicts, it is important to manage these relationships cautiously. The first step in doing so is to perform market intelligence in order to understand what motivates your complementors.
About the authors
Michael Lurie is the CEO and founder of the Agile Strategy Institute, a research, education and consulting organization, and the creator of its original core body of knowledge. He is also the founder of the Agile Strategy Alliance, a non-profit professional association for executives, board members and advisors interested in learning and practicing agile strategy.