In the current fast-paced business climate, keeping up with macro-environmental changes, and competition is becoming increasingly difficult. Marketing intelligence system refers to systematic and ethical approach, procedures, and sources that marketing managers use to gather and analyse everyday information about various developments with regard to competitors and other business trends in the marketing environment. This intelligence is collected from various sources such as newspapers, trade publications, business magazines, talking with suppliers, channel members, customers, other managers, and sales force people.
About competitive intelligence, the general idea is that more than 80 per cent information is public knowledge. The most important sources from which to obtain competitive intelligence include competitors’ annual and financial reports, speeches by company executives, government documents, trade organisations, online databases, and other popular and business press. The company can take certain steps to obtain quality marketing intelligence. The company should take steps to train and motivate field sales personnel about the types of information to report regularly on any relevant developments in the marketplace. Besides sales force, the company can take steps to motivate channel members to pass along important intelligence. The company can also purchase competitors’ products, and attend trade fairs.
Some important questions that managers should ask about competitive intelligence are:
* How fast does the competitive climate in our industry change? How important is it to keep our knowledge about these changes current?
* What are the objectives of our company about competitive intelligence?
* Who are the important clients for competitive intelligence? To whom should the intelligence effort be reported?
With rapid developments in the area of software applications that run on PCs, it is becoming increasingly possible to keep track of client lists and the various kinds of contacts that are made with each client. Many such programmes keep track of clients’ names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, personal details such as birthdays, likes and dislikes, product/brand usage, hobbies, club memberships, etc.
Most of today’s information systems are computer applications in a sophisticated datadriven age. These enable marketers to be better informed about their customers, potential customers, and competitors. This helps marketers to be more productive and establish and sustain competitive advantage. New applications are being developed at a faster pace. The ultimate focus of most such systems is to enable marketers to know enough about any given customer and the competitive context, to fine-tune their marketing efforts to better serve the target market so that customer’s needs are met perfectly. This is the ultimate dream for every marketer.