Why do organizations need Market Intelligence platforms?
By: Natasha Richardson
Tags: Market Intelligence, Intelligence Platforms, Competitive Intelligence, Business Intelligence

Introduction

Market intelligence is information relevant to an organization from its industry including its competitors, customers, partners, and all about the industrial ecosystem. It is considered essential to gather and analyze market intelligence data to shape the long and short-term plans of organizations. If two emerging organizations are competing to be the leader of an industry, the one who is on the toes to gather strategic information wins the race by applying such information, data, and knowledge in decision making and planning.

Market intelligence is the tool organizations leverage for looking at what the customers and prospects are now expecting. It helps organizations maintain and improve their products and services. On that note, let us deep-dive into how organizations can make use of market intelligence or what are the key benefits of market intelligence platforms for organizations across industries.

Why Market Intelligence platforms?

Extracting and using market Intelligence can add up for organizational growth in certain ways. But it also depends on the way market intelligence is gathered and analyzed. Therefore, leading organizations leverage market intelligence platforms to get structured intelligence and insights. Let us see how that helps.

Target audience study

Market intelligence is a way through which organizations decipher patterns of customer and prospect behavior. This market intelligence data answers the questions of marketers, strategists, and decision-makers about what kind of strategies are responsive for the audience, and the analysis of such strategies can add a lot of relevant observations that can help decision-makers in building other strategies too. Earlier organizations used traditional tools like manual research for mapping the target audience, but with the growth of internet space, it is not possible to manually keep track of customer behavior. Therefore, with a market intelligence platform, organizations can track audience engagement with their industry efficiently.

Competitive landscape analysis

Market intelligence has a wide scope for organizations looking to boost their growth. A part of it is competitive intelligence that is used for keeping an eye on the activities, campaigns, and events of competitor organizations. It helps the organization in understanding the scheme of events that customers are already in tune with. Getting into the customer mindset is important for marketing and sales job roles and for that, you have to look at the whole market and read through the battle cards of your competitors for analysis. Previously, organizations used to monitor competitive intelligence with the help of Google Alerts but now, when the sources of information are less but not limited to the wide space of the internet, Google Alerts is being phased out. This has resulted in organizations starting to look for Google alerts alternatives. Now, market intelligence platforms serve this purpose by effectively tracking market and competitive intelligence relevant to one’s business.

Positioning in the market

The market intelligence platform enhances your knowledge of the external environment by keeping you posted with the recent updates of how your industry peers are positioning themselves in the market. It can also bring opportunities to try something new that prospects and customers are expecting.

Product / Service positioning

When your organization is selling a product or a service, it is vital to brush up your knowledge of the industry and market trends to keep up with the changing product positioning of your competitors, government policies around the industry, and news updates. For example, if your competitor changes its positioning from Cow milk to Fresh and healthy cow milk, you need to keep a track of such activities in the market. But the question is how? As it is not easy to monitor the internet that is filled up with tons of information by everyone. Therefore, a market intelligence platform provides market insights that help you in positioning your product as per the changing market landscape.

Conclusion

Market intelligence is an important element required for the end-goals of every stakeholder team member of the organization, be it marketing, sales, leadership, strategy, or procurement team but it might be used by them in different ways. For example, while marketing team members would be interested in understanding the positioning of the organization, product, or service but the sales team might use such intelligence as a conversation starter. Hence, organizations supercharge their market intelligence tracking with market intelligence platforms that help them track relevant information, updates, and news from the market and competitors for analysis.