Market Intelligence vs. Information: Growing Your Business with the Right Tool

Whether you are a business executive, organizational leader, or team participant, you face pivotal questions every day about your market.

How extensive is it? What motivates your customers? How are your competitors evolving? The answers are often buried in an unceasing stream of news and commentaries, all buzzing through the internet around the clock.

Information vs. Intelligence: A Crucial Distinction

In this age of information overload, gaining a competitive edge means moving faster and more decisively, while armed with relevant data. That hinges on harnessing market intelligence to discern relevant trends rather than passively collecting and sorting through disorganized information.

Let’s delve into the distinction between information and market intelligence.

Information

Information is comprised of unfiltered facts and figures, often readily available from sources like news, blogs, company announcements, and government releases. While potentially valuable, information can overwhelm users with its sheer volume. It often lacks relevance, cohesion, and clear direction.

The challenge? Sorting through this flood of data can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Information overload is inefficient for knowledge workers. There is less time for strategic or entrepreneurial endeavors. Meanwhile, executives risk overlooking essential details, missing emerging revenue opportunities, or disregarding crucial early signals that could have averted a crisis.

An inundated executive may even choose to disregard the deluge of data communications entirely!

Market Intelligence

Market intelligence involves continuous monitoring of market events, coupled with expert filtering to extract salient details and relevant trends. High-quality market intelligence synchronizes a wealth of business drivers to paint a clear picture for informed decision-making. While information provides users with raw data, market intelligence refines it into actionable knowledge.

The benefit? Market intelligence guides knowledge workers through the intricate landscape of business challenges, from adapting to consumer trends and navigating regulatory shifts to mitigating supply chain disruptions. When critical strategic decisions loom in the fiercely competitive marketplace, informed executives don’t stumble in the dark; they lead with relevant and accurate data.

Taking the Market Pulse: What’s the Best Approach?

The internet offers a plethora of options for information seekers. There are numerous newsrooms, blogs, podcasts, and social media channels, each varying in trustworthiness. Meanwhile, governmental agencies and research firms diligently publish statistics on a daily basis.

Information research tools are also readily available on the internet and are easy to use as information abounds. However, the question remains: What is the most effective way to understand your market?

Manual Information Research

Popular search engines such as Google or Bing allow searchers to quickly locate market research blogs, government statistics, investor relations announcements, and more. Standard alert services like Google Alerts or RSS feeds can monitor new content on specific topics or from specific sources.

Although easy to use, these information tools often inundate users with an overwhelming amount of data without distilling it down to actionable insights. Instead, the user needs to work with the information, which can be time-consuming and potentially lead to errors with missed information or connections.

News outlets often broadcast or publish the same info, whether it’s the latest unemployment rate, a company’s quarterly earnings, or a recent labor strike. However, it would take meticulous investigation to determine the implications for one’s company or business ecosystem. Even if a diligent researcher manages to gather all relevant analyses, the entire organization won’t reap the benefits unless the information is effectively shared and acted upon in a coordinated manner.

Customized Dashboard and Filters

A well-designed dashboard that monitors the market daily but filters out redundant news, displaying just the unique factoids relevant to one’s business, streamlines the process of distilling vast information into actionable intelligence. The benefit goes beyond boosting an individual’s efficiency. If everyone in the organization has access to this dashboard, it will allow efficient sharing of the intelligence, prompting discussion and timely collaboration based on a common trigger, such as seeing a competitor’s new product launch, or seeing a proposed legislative measure.

In a recent study, research firm Gitnux found that 97% of business professionals recognize that misalignment within a team negatively impacts the outcome of the team’s task or project. A customized dashboard could empower the entire team to overcome misalignment in the realm of market intelligence.

Solving Your Challenges

Industry Intelligence Inc. takes a holistic approach to market intelligence. We don't just relay information — our experts monitor each market, sifting through the noise to identify events, risks, and opportunities that matter to industry clients. Our trusted technology connects related facts, and our AI-powered analysis saves time for busy executives by pinpointing trends from current news. Our customized dashboard aligns with each client’s operational structure, mapping the market intelligence to the client’s business drivers.

We know that having actionable intelligence is not about having more information. It's about having the right insights at the right time, accessible at our clients’ fingertips. A market intelligence system is useful if it can guide your entire organization to answer burning questions every day:

• Do you wonder what the next market disruptor will be?
• Are you concerned about complex legislative shifts that will affect your material sourcing and production costs?
• Do you know if your competitors are adapting to changing consumer tastes?
• Do you need to decide where you should devote more resources?
• Are you ready to enter a new market?

Let us help you solve your business challenges with smarter, actionable intelligence that truly makes a difference. Contact us at sales@industryintel.com to learn more.