| Market Intelligence can be defined as the information relevant to the company’s markets, gathered and analyzed specifically for the purpose of accurate and confident decision making in determining market opportunity, market penetration strategy, and market development metrics. (Wikipedia) In the context of the supply chain, it’s generally used to refer to the information relevant to the company’s Supply Management practice which includes commodity market information, supplier information, and category management best practices.
Providers of market intelligence solutions will usually focus on metric-driven industry benchmarks, pricing indexes, customer-driven or supplier-driven surveys and case studies, industry production data, and/or current industry best practices. They will also typically address one or more of the following “dimensions” in their analysis:
- Forecasts and Price History
What is the forecasted demand and how much is the raw material, commodity, or service expected to cost?
- Supply Base Market Share
Who are the players in the market and how is the customer base split between them?
- Capacity
What is the production capacity of the market?
- Buyers
Who are major buyers of the raw material, good, or service in question?
- Merger and Acquisition Activity
How are the dynamics of the market changing?
- Value Chain Analysis
What are the key cost and price drivers?
- Emerging Technologies
What technologies are emerging that may (drastically) reshape the market?
- Porter’s Five Force Analysis
That outlines the power balance, or imbalance, that exists between the different players in the market.
- (In-Depth) Risk Analysis
What are the major risks from a capacity or sustainability perspective?
- Government, Regulatory, and Socioeconomic forecasts
What legislation, proposed legislation, and social trends are shaping or reshaping the market?
Consumers of Market Intelligence can obtain the information from a number of sources, including:
- Analyst and Market Intelligence Firms
A number of firms are in the sole practice of gathering and selling market intelligence in one or more markets.
- Consulting and Solution Providers
Specialist consulting and solution providers often have in-depth market intelligence in one or more categories or one or more verticals.
- Supply Base
Suppliers will often have market intelligence related to their business.
- Customer Base
Customers will often have market intelligence relating to their business or consumer needs.
- Professional Organizations
The collective membership of a professional organization has access to a large amount of quality information and data that represents a significant amount of market intelligence when taken as a whole.
- Trade Publications
The articles in many trade publications will contain specific market intelligence relevant to the subject of the articles.
- Conferences
The collective knowledge of the presenters and participants will represent a great deal of market intelligence at many conferences.
- Internal Experts
The experts in your organization will have amassed a significant amount of market intelligence in their area of expertise.
- Blogs
The new media bloggers delight in providing you with free information that represents current market intelligence as a holistic whole.
For more information on market intelligence in the supply chain, please refer to the following posts:
|
