What is market intelligence
A preliminary scope
Typical of an emerging discipline, we see various explanations and definitions that use the terms market intelligence, competitive intelligence, business intelligence, sometimes as synonyms or unclear scope.
To understand these terms, we should start explaining that all of them relate to the need for companies to develop the design of their strategies from an advanced and in-depth knowledge of the market forces. As Michael Porter already announced in his Model of Market Forces, the need to collect and analyze information on the environment of the company is an essential measure for the development of successful strategies.
An integrating scheme
In SCAN we understand as market intelligence that discipline of the strategic management of the companies that allows, through a permanent flow of information, understand in deeper market and the performance of the company within it. When we speak of knowing the market, we assume that we are interested in being informed of customers as much as of competitors.
Given the above, we can venture to define concepts such as business intelligence and competitive intelligence, both forming part of an integrated market intelligence system, each with own and different roles.
By business intelligence we refer to the set of tools that allows to extract knowledge of our business. Here we will look into computer systems that help delineate dynamics in our customer base. Trends in sales, niche value, leakage of customers, profitability segments are all issues that we can detect through business intelligence. Normally this discipline uses intensively software solutions and requires inner work of data analysis.
On the other hand, we say that competitive intelligence is a systematic process of compilation and analysis of information on the activities of competitors, to support the achievement of the goals of the company. It is about a permanent flow of information that allows to know what our competitors are doing , commercial, financial, organizationally or other aspects.
What is market intelligence?
We can describe the market intelligence as a core of information resulting from 3 sources of information that feed, through a permanent flow of data, the center of analysis of the enterprise market.
These three sources of information are: the company’s own business; competition and the consumer.
What is the difference between market intelligence, competitive intelligence and business intelligence?
It is often seen that these concepts are used interchangeably as if they referred to the same concept. However, these terms suggest to completely different information realities. Market intelligence is the concept that we use to group all the activities of market analysis, whether emanating from the business, competition or consumer.
Therefore, market intelligence is a broad concept, as an umbrella, which includes at least three disciplines. These are:
- Discipline, that is responsible for feeding our market intelligence system with information from our own business, we’ll call it Business Intelligence or simply BI.
- Competitive intelligence must be understood as a discipline that provides information and analysis of the competition, a key part in a comprehensive market intelligence system.
- The eyes of the consumer will provide the market research, discipline that will also be part of our market intelligence system.
