What is Market Intelligence Systems?
Market intelligence systems are a type of system that systematically gathers market information; it also processes this information to transform it into actionable intelligence for management to make marketing decisions. Let the points below help you understand this better.
- Market Intelligence Systems are much more than gathering market information for a particular business. It collects the knowledge of the entire external system required to support the most critical management decisions of pricing, products, priorities of investments, and entering into a joint venture with any other company.
- Market Intelligence Systems is not only entirely computer-based system; it is a complete system that involves human efforts and brains to efficiently process and interpret the entire information into market intelligence systems.
- There is only one condition to this process, that is this process needs to be followed systematically because only by monitoring the system or the market or the critical external factors and incorporating an unequal scrap of data regularly will be able to provide management with a feasible long-term Market Intelligence systems base to work and calculate on.
Why is Market Intelligence Systems Important?
As the customer base increases, the company’s marketing management needs more than just market research. Marketing intelligence information is essential and very reliable data for the management of any company. This Marketing intelligence data helps them make wise and critical decisions. It only allows management to recognize, predict, analyze, resolve, and prevent problems if it provides apt, relevant, and trustable data. It is also essential as it gives every trained marketing manager the purpose-lasting efforts to help them analyze the issue and employ this necessary reliable information related to the market and their business from internal and external factors.
The market and its environment have been changing rapidly; hence companies need to adopt strategies that suit these market changes, requiring market intelligence systems and appropriate information. The changes in the market are dynamic as everything has been changing lately, and mind you, the changes are accelerating. These changes can be anything like the national or the international market, the needs and the requirements of the consumer; competition is a price competition or a nonprice competition. As businesses expand to national or international markets, managers keep requiring more and more data, and the data needs to come to them quickly. Because competition increases, the buyers in the market have more options; they are more selective about what they want.
The market intelligence systems company has to keep changing the data and the style of applying market intelligence systems to sell their products. They need to choose their branding and differentiation in their products very effectively, they need to advertise smartly and promote their sales, and for all of this, they need the marking tools to be very effective.
Managers today face a problem with the change and complexity that evolves from the company’s interaction with the tumultuous external marketing environment. Well, managers, today need to be accustomed to these susceptible and continuous changes in the market. Every employee of the company needs to gain an excellent understanding of the internal and external atmosphere. This alertness and cleverness of the market are essential for the organization and its employees. This is simply because the company depends on the inputs of resources and the outputs of its services. Remember, every successful company in the market takes an inside and an outside view of its business and performance.
Summarizing it further, the market intelligence systems information received daily, of course, is necessary information that market researchers gather to analyze it specifically for accurate and confident decision-making to determine the opportunities available in the market; it also helps in deciding market penetration strategies, developing market matrices and also to determine when can the business enter foreign business or global business. It also resolves the required intelligence, accumulates this information by searching the environment or the market, and hands the information to the market managers who need it. All this is done with the help of different software; the data comes from web analytics, business intelligence, sales data, and call centers.
Different companies define the types of market intelligence systems differently, as types of market intelligence platforms differ with the kind of industry. Some companies and industries use market intelligence analysis to base their external data, some use it to establish internal data, some use social media monitoring, some use business intelligence, and some prefer competitive intelligence. However, the conclusion is that market intelligence system depends from industry to industry or company to company.
How to gather and improve market intelligence systems?
Gathering marketing intelligence is tactful as it needs to be done very carefully, for only relevant information needs to be used by the market intelligence analyst of the company to come to a realistic conclusion.
Let’s see how you can gather information
1. Put your sales team to use
A straightforward way is using the front face of your company. The sales team of your company is the people facing the customers; facing the customers is facing the market indirectly. Your group can get the required information from the customers. If you have a team facing the market or going out in the market, you can get relevant information quickly; this information or data can be of your competitors, the business, and the industry. Accumulate the data for your marketing managers to help them work better.
2. Channel partners can help
Channel partners are nothing but your business partners and work for your company and other companies. Your channel partners can give you better feedback on improving your products and services. Your sales team might not be as interested in your business as much as your channel partner will be because your business also serves as their livelihood. They can help you with the improvement of the company strategies. These channel partners are the company’s internal customers; you need to take feedback from them and keep them motivated to be loyal to the company.
3. Competitors and their channel partners will be of great help
Marketing and product managers need to keep track of their channel partners and their sales team and keep an eye on their competitors, their channel partners, and their techniques or new products. To ensure that the organization performs well or sells its products well, its product and marketing managers need to be smart and be competitive in management. Designing effective products and marketing them smartly is essential.
4. Catch hold of a good market research agency
If you do not want your employees to get involved in market research and want them to focus on their jobs, you can employ a good market research agency. These agencies hire professionals experienced in market research and intelligence systems. They can accumulate relevant data and other information required by the company and the organization. The managers need to analyze this data to arrive at a productive conclusion.
5. The in a way – the social media marketing
Social media is one of the most convenient ways to market your products. The importance has increased because most people today, especially the youth of every country, have access to technology. You can maximize this opportunity to market online as the marketing is very effective. So if you can market online, so can you accumulate data online? We can conduct market research online using social media. Yes, you can use the latest form of marketing and collecting data. Use the technology as it will defiantly help in accumulating relevant information.
6. Create an advisory panel for your customers
You can create an advisory panel for your customers; this idea is a little old yet beneficial even today. You want to know how to improve yourself; you need to know what it is that your customers want; it is simple to hear it from the horse moth itself. With the help of the customer panel, you can ask the customer what they like the most, what is it that is relevant to them, what more they expect, how they can get better, what it is that they do not like at all, what is it that the company needs to do to improve the products and services, etc. Collect relevant questions that you think can help you improve and improve your market intelligence techniques and technology.
How can we also improve existing marketing intelligence?
Now let’s see how we can also improve existing marketing intelligence:
1. Training and motivating your sales team
The sales team is the best source of information for the company since they have access to customers, the market, competitors, and channel partners as the front face of the company. Keep your sales team motivated and trained in gathering relevant information.
2. Train and motivate your channel partners
As discussed earlier, your channel partners are the better source of providing information and data for your organization’s products and services. All you need to do is keep them trained in collecting consumer data. You also need to keep them motivated so that they provide you with more and more market information. The companies also hire specialists to help the company collect information and data to help the managers make intelligent decisions.
3. Be aware of your competitors
Competitive intelligence is critical in helping you analyze your position in the market. With the help of your company data, your consumer’s feedback, and competitive intelligence, the managers that are both the marketing and product managers of the company can make important decisions related to the organization’s progress and growth. This can improve your market intelligence tools & techniques.
4. Customer advisory panels
Collecting market and customer information is easy if you create customer advisory panels. Create a questionnaire and put it up on the websites and social media, and also develop leaflets to hand the same out to your customers. Collect necessary information and use this information to better your market intelligence tools & techniques.
5. Use government data resource
The government of every country publishes a number of data that includes information on the population of the country, agriculture, trends, demographic distinctiveness, etc. Organizations can use this data to make appropriate decisions.
6. Increase online research and marketing
Everything today is done online. You can do everything online: research, collect data, create customer panels, collect information, and market your products online. The internet and, of all, social media play a massive role in modern marketing intelligence. Internet and social media are the best ways to improve your market intelligence platform research.
Conclusion
If there were market intelligence platforms vs market research, Market intelligence platforms are much more than market research. It is market intelligence platform data and market intelligence systems information that is not just important for the organization’s marketing team; it is much more than that. The entire organization can utilize this information to transform it into actionable intelligence. This system gathers data from internal and external environments, which helps the management make crucial decisions quickly and effectively. The implication of market intelligence platforms affects every decision of the organization. We need to follow this process systematically and monitor it daily.
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