The Handbook of Market Intelligence: Understand, Compete and Grow in Global Markets, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10Market Intelligence for Current Awareness Across the Organization

PULLING IN THE “MUST KNOW” WHILE KEEPING OUT THE “NICE TO KNOW”

Case: Targeted Market Monitoring Helps Avoid Information Overload in an Energy Company

“We didn’t want to bother our people with ‘nice to know’ information, but wanted to support their work with targeted intelligence content that each of them would find relevant and useful”, says the Business Intelligence (BI) manager in a Nordic energy company, having established a market monitoring service for a group of 200 executives and experts inside the organization. “As our people have been getting increasingly overwhelmed by the amounts of available information, we now only take in information that is relevant for the company, and our people can further narrow the scope to only cover topics of interest to them individually”, she continues. “As the market signals have also been geared at supporting sales work specifically, our sales people are essentially getting leads directly to their desktop, which puts an additional twist to the service and increases our motivation to stay tuned to the current developments in the marketplace.”

When executives and professionals are asked about their methods of maintaining awareness about the daily developments in their industry, it is not uncommon to hear comments along the lines of “I’m reading business newspapers and subscribing to four different news services to keep abreast of what’s happening”, or ...