Maintaining your unique selling point and competitive advantage through ongoing market intelligence and competitor information is vital. Up-to-date information about your market will keep you aware of changes or developments that could affect your business, at the same time indicating trends in consumer demand that you can exploit. It could also help you to identify economic trends in the market that could affect the buying habits of your customers.

Using Market Intelligence

Market intelligence will enable you to update your sales forecasts on a regular basis, also assisting you when reviewing your overall strategy. It is also critical that you keep track of your competitors. On a continuing basis you need to find out what they are doing, what they are charging, and any new products they have launched which could compete with yours. Even if you consider that your product is the best in the market there will always be someone competing with you on a different factor of the marketing mix.

If you employ sales staff, ensure that they obtain feedback from your customers. It is likely that your customers will also be looking at the activities of your competitors and it may be that they can provide you with ‘inside’ information. For example, it is not unknown for a competitor to approach a customer of a rival firm and offer some form of inducement such as a discount or better credit terms in order to gain their business. Lack of information on this sort of activity at an early stage could lead to your customer base declining.

Retaining Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is everything in business. You must retain a unique selling point that will consistently bring you new customers as well as repeat business. The only way you can do this is to research the market continually in order to establish exactly what is happening.

Information is power and unless you have that power you may miss out on new opportunities available to you in the market. Even worse, you could succumb to new threats in the market that could destroy your business.

Avoid Complacency At All Costs

There will never be a time when you can afford to do nothing within your business. There will always be something that you can do better or more efficiently. It does not matter what size of business you run. If you do not do it, someone else will step in and fill the gap. You only need to compare the stock exchange listings from ten years ago with those of today to find a lot of missing names – some of them even household names at the time.

Failure in business can happen to anyone and whilst many would blame lack of resources, there can only be one true reason. They were not providing what the customer wanted, at the right price and at the right time. In essence, their marketing failed.

Establishing A Management Information System

Management information comes in a variety of formats. You need to establish a management information system as an entirely distinct function within your business, and allocate sufficient time and resources to ensure that it is effective.

The cost of computers continuing to fall as they have done in recent years, there is no excuse for not having a computer and a printer for your business. The availability of suitable database software makes this the most efficient way of storing information, as well as giving you the added advantage of being able to organise the information in many different ways. These aspects are considered in Chapter 24.

You do, however, need to be aware of the ‘paralysis by analysis’ maxim. This refers to spending so much time evaluating past performance that you lose track of your overall plan. Prioritising information is essential in keeping the whole management information system workable.

Decide which information is critical to oversee the overall business operation and then store only that which is appropriate to meet that objective. The simpler the system, the more likely it will be to succeed.

You need to ask yourself three questions when establishing your management information system:

• What information do I need?
• Why do I need it?
• What will I use it for?

 

Unless you can provide satisfactory answers for all three questions for any piece of information there is probably little value in storing it. At all costs, avoid storing information which you ‘think I might need in the future’. If you do need something similar in the future you should be able to obtain more up-to-date information.

The introduction of a management information system, especially where it affects or measures human performance, can be a very sensitive issue. A possible example could be where you are measuring the sales performance of your staff. Take time to explain the purpose of the system to your staff and seek their help in design and implementation.

Use your staff to gather information for you. Many items of critical marketing intelligence are lost because staff do not see the need to report it. For example, if you have delivery staff use them to gain intelligence when they deliver goods. They can probably see the efforts of your competitors who are also delivering goods and this information could provide opportunities for you.

You may have no need actually to store the information in the management information system. It is, however, better to have it in the first place and subsequently discard it, than not to have it at all. Competitive advantage is critical, and to maintain that advantage you must obtain ongoing information on what is happening in the market.