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

Chapter 11Market Intelligence for Strategic Planning

Fred was looking forward to next week’s strategic planning workshop. As the head of business development at a large financial services company, he had been preparing for the workshop for two months already. He now felt he had an excellent package of facts and figures to present to his colleagues. His plan suggested that the company should go ahead and introduce its equity trading services to a new customer segment.

Fred had been supported in his task by Sue, the MI director, who had worked with a partner company to collect and analyze the data that Fred needed to back up his plans. Not that all evidence in the market would have supported Fred’s plans, though: Sue and the analyst team had been able to bring up market insights that would provoke lively discussion among the executive team next week, Fred was sure. His plan might even be put on hold for the moment, but, whatever the eventual decision, it would be based on solid information and a high quality discussion, Fred thought.

CHALLENGES IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

Fred, in our example, is well prepared for the upcoming strategic planning round, having perhaps learned from past mistakes: all too often business unit heads and strategic planners leave the preparations for the planning workshop to the last minute, then try to make up for the lack of groundwork by desperately searching for relevant data through Google.

Admittedly, the strategic decision-makers’ task is not ...