2. 9 Intelligence Trends
TREND 1
From Competitive to
Market-Intelligence
TREND 2
Challenge
Market Data
TREND 3
Focus on
Future Issues
TREND 4
Use Globalisation
Opportunities
TREND 5
Support Sales
TREND 6
Be Smart,
Be Fast
TREND 7
Further Develop
Interactivity
TREND 8
Get Rid of the Rubbish
– Reduce to the Max
TREND 9
Use Smart Data
Approaches
3. From Competitive
to Market-Intelligence
While discussing digitization, the ecosystems of companies are increasingly
being fully analyzed and monitored. This means, on the one hand, a jump on
the cost side. Yet on the other hand, increases the internal perception of the
company´s market and competitive intelligence experts, if they broaden the
scope of their work and focus more on strategic topics.
Question to you: Do you have an overview of the whole ecosystem of your
company?
TREND 1
4. Challenge Market Data
Companies increasingly rely on their own market models and calculations
to determine market size and market shares. Studies organized by industry
associations, or by multiple clients with unchecked self-reporting are
increasingly being challenged for efficacy.
Question to you: How closely do your market figures correspond to reality?
TREND 2
5. Focus on Future Issues
Besides the widespread future-oriented forecasts of market data, a stronger
focus on trends (industry trends, megatrends, etc.) and scenarios can be
observed. On the competitor level, it´s business war-gaming. Digitization, as
well as an increase in uncertainty factors are reasons for this.
Question to you: Should you plan for trend- and scenario-analysis 2017?
How do your competitors tackle digitization?
TREND 3
6. Use Globalisation
Opportunities
Companies are diversifying their office locations throughout multiple countries.
A trend can thus be determined, that employees within local companies are
becoming increasingly involved in market intelligence activities as either an
interface, or information supplier for corporate HQ´s.
Question to you: Does it make sense for you to empower local employees
to become CI champions and information hubs?
TREND 4
7. Support Sales
There is a strong trend towards sales support activities, often referred to as
sales intelligence. This applies, on the one hand, to business development, but
also to the operational sales teams, which are being provided with battlecards,
service benchmarkings or data analytics (propensity models).
Question to you: How can you help your sales team to sell or to sell more?
TREND 5
8. Be Smart, Be Fast
Companies need a lot of time, especially in large corporate structures, to deliver
intelligence reports and to determine market KPIs. In addition, planning and
strategy cycles often do not reflect the current business environment. As a
result, companies are stepping up their efforts to change internal processes in
order to be able to identify market KPIs more quickly.
Question to you: How can you speed up your internal processes without
losing quality?
TREND 6
9. Further Develop Interactivity
Static presentations in PowerPoint and PDF format are increasingly outdated.
The use of interactive dashboards is becoming more and more popular.
Visualization tools, such as Tableau or Qlik are increasingly used to enable
interactivity and to integrate additional data sources.
Question to you: How can you become more interactive in your reporting?
TREND 7
10. Get Rid of the Rubbish –
Reduce to the Max
In companies, there is often a discrepancy between information overload
and the insights needed. For this reason, companies are questioning and
eliminating existing CI formats (reports, newsletters, etc.). Subsequently, the
focus is on high-quality analysis and fewer reports.
Question to you: What does this mean for your company? Which CI formats
are still up-to-date and really used?
TREND 8
11. Use Smart Data Approaches
In the big data area, smart applications are being developed, which automate
past manual activities or gather new insights through the intelligent connection
of databases. Smart Data is the interplay between Data Analytics and the
brainpower of the market- and competitive-intelligence experts.
Question to you: How can you gain new insights in 2017 in a smart way?
TREND 9