As companies carefully plot strategy in today's increasingly competitive and cost-conscious environment, Managers are realizing that they need a more thorough understanding of the forces influencing their business in order to make sound decisions. Marketing Intelligence is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about the market place, which, when put into proper perspective, generates the insights that lead to better decisions.

Marketing Intelligence identifies the competitive forces at play, the key variables for success, major opportunities for growth, and the strategies and tactics that need to be implemented in order to achieve profitable growth.

In the past, we relied on market research, which by contrast is heavily numbers-oriented, and by nature historical. Today people don't want to take past trends and extrapolate them along a straight line. They want to understand the driving forces - the interpretation and implications of events taking place in the marketplace.

Marketing Intelligence cancels out bias, neutralizes speculation and confirms the facts. If you have a problem, Marketing Intelligence will give you its dimensions: if you have no problems, it will give you an idea of what your opportunities are.

By accessing customers, competitors, suppliers and government through print sources, electronic data bases, and expert sources, Marketing Intelligence provides an overview of the environment in which we operate today as well as, the one in which we will find ourselves tomorrow.

As traditional markets become more competitive, it becomes increasingly necessary to identify and exploit specialty niches where, because of a company's particular strengths and weaknesses, it has a competitive advantage. Marketing Intelligence helps identify these specialty niches and defines precisely the scenario within which they can be exploited.

In an age when the only certainty is change, one can never have enough information about one's market. Managers are frequently too preoccupied with individual daily situations to have the time to keep abreast of changes in the marketplace and there is a growing willingness among them to pay for Marketing Intelligence to guide them and back them in their decisions.

TYPICAL PROJECTS

I MARKET ANALYSIS

  1. Market identification and segmentation
  2. Determination of size
  3. Identification of trends, changes, reasons behind them, how the market is responding, how it will likely respond in the future
  4. Identification of pre-qualified opportunities for immediate new business development

II INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

  1. The Client Company: Identification of strengths, weaknesses, what it does best, worst; analysis of current sales and customer base; determination of competitive advantage and how well the company is exploiting it in the market place. Determination of which sales are most profitable and why; which are least profitable and why.

  2. The Competitors: Who the successful growing companies are in the industry, and why they are growing, what their strengths and weaknesses are and what they are doing right; future trends that they see impacting the industry and how they plan to respond; who the losers are and why they are losing; where they are losing; where the client company fits into all of this.

  3. The Customers: Identification of major customers/prospects in the market-place, what trends they see taking shape in terms of changing needs, new products/services, new technology, new applications, changes in the way they do business, current and future expectations in performance from their suppliers

  4. The Economic Climate: Identification of the social, economic and political forces impacting the marketplace and what they mean in terms of growth opportunities; identification of the growth segments in the marketplace; which products/market segments should be introduced/entered, which ones should be abandoned; general conclusions and future outlook.

III COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

  1. General
    - History, Organization, Culture
    - Relationship with parent
    - Management analysis: organization charts, ages and number of years of service of key decision makers, management styles, philosophies, ethics, business approach, marketing savvy, sales strength, technical expertise, aggressiveness

  2. Accounting, finance and administration
    - Current financial information (if available) including current results, cash
    flow, indebtedness, credit worthiness, etc.
    - Accounting practices, policies, procedures
    - Details of financial planning (if applicable)
    - Details of computerization, nature of hardware, software, current applications, future plans

  3. Manufacturing
    - Equipment detail, age and condition in each location
    - Details of output, economies of scale
    - Capacity utilization by plant, number of shifts
    - Number of people employed, union status, state of labor relations
    - Reputation/philosophy re: quality, delivery, reliability, rush orders
    - Details of manufacturing training program
    - Capital expenditures being planned and process for approval
    - Degree of flexibility to changes in the market
    - Industrial engineering capability: approach to products/methods/systems improvements and involvement of senior management
    - Nature of cooperation in developing new products to meet customers future needs

  4. Marketing/Sales - Details of sales volume, % gross profit, % net profit, total and/or geographic split, product margins (if possible)
    - Details of sales organization, selling style, sales training program, customer service organization (if applicable)
    - Current marketing capability and degree to which the total marketing job is covered
    - Strengths and weaknesses, areas of vulnerability
    - Current products, markets, market shares by segment (if possible) relative degree of concentration/diversity, in which phases of their cycles are current chief products, recent growth rate, vulnerability to business cycle changes
    - Identification of customers: image analysis
    - Competitive market trends re: growth, technology, marketing, pricing
    - Strategic plan, new business areas, markets planning to enter, business
    areas planning to exit: most valued/least valued segments and likely response to attack
    - Parent's long term objectives and impact on subsidiaries (if applicable)
    - Conclusions and future outlook - how to compete

RECENT PROJECTS (PDF Format)

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