The Critical Role of Market Intelligence in Business Mastery
The pace of digital business change is driving organizations to boost the sophistication of their marketing processes and tools. IDC’s Global Partner Survey 2023 found that technology partners across different technology vendor ecosystems in EMEA consider new marketing capabilities to be a top investment priority to remain competitive.
To ensure excellence, marketing intelligence and strategic planning leaders need to continually monitor and reassess their target market, product and service mix, as well as the competitive landscape. To maintain agility, they must design and govern a complex spectrum of programs that encompasses quantitative research and deep data dives. Customized market data underpins the decision-making processes, enabling these executives to empower the company with actionable insights.
From Growth Strategy to Performance Measurement: A Data-Centric Approach
Finding opportunities for business growth and setting targets and incentives while monitoring the competitive ecosystem are imperatives for strategic planning and marketing intelligence executives.
Possessing evidence-based, quantitative insights helps address multiple stakeholder needs. When it comes to planning, for example, tailored data is essential to uncover the potential for entry or expansion into new market segments or geographies, as well as to forecast demand for your current technology and services portfolio.
Examining market adjacencies or blue oceans removes blind spots and provides intelligence on potential growth opportunities. What data are you using to inform new solutions areas or horizontal and vertical diversification strategies — or to identify partnerships, channels, or even acquisition targets?
In the field of performance measurement and management, evaluating a company’s standing within the context of the market is critical. This requires adequate data analysis, scenario planning, forecasting, and reporting that leverages highly credible and accurate data. The data must be a blend of internal business intelligence and external market intelligence.
Do you have a single version of the truth?
Navigating Critical Inquiries and Data Challenges: Pursuing Accuracy and Timeliness
According to IDC’s Global Partner Survey 2023, EMEA technology partners regard the rise of new competitors as one of the top 5 threats or challenges faced by their business. Marketing intelligence teams within the IT industry increasingly need to manage up-to-date information on competitor performance, comparisons against other organizations and sectors, and conduct ongoing peer evaluations.
In an ocean of information, marketing and strategic planning executives face the trials of ensuring data accuracy and quality. Their ability to drive success is largely dependent on the alignment of data insights with the strategic timelines of their businesses.
They need timely answers to vital questions: Is our data comprehensive and consistent? How do we ensure comparability that enables benchmarking between different competitors? When it comes to market segments or geos, do we own the granularity needed for detailed and meaningful analysis?
The ability to respond to such questions at the right time determines the effectiveness of a strategic planning process.
Empowering Strategy with Actionable Insights: The Executive Mandate
In today’s business environment, organizations continuously reassess their business road maps. The implications for market intelligence teams are profound, as they play a pivotal role in executing upon the senior manager’s mandate. They analyze, scrutinize, and translate raw data into strategic directives that propel various departments, whether to improve marketing strategies, enhance product development, or maximize operational efficiency.
For the marketing managers of the technology vendor community, understanding markets, geographies, and technologies are table stakes. There are, however, open questions related to other perspectives. For example: How are budgets shifting between different functional departments? How do we ensure the data we use aligns to our taxonomy or view of the world? How do our competitors change by industry?
IDC’s Global Partner Survey 2023 revealed that developing industry-specific capabilities and offerings is the fourth most important investment or transformation priority that partners in EMEA need to execute upon to remain competitive. The IT industry continuously reviews its capabilities, offerings, and business models to stay aligned with evolving buyer needs and trends while staying ahead of the competition.
But this raises more strategic questions, including: Which verticals, industries, or subindustries offer the biggest opportunity? Which have the lowest barriers to entry or competitive presence? How do buyers change by industry? How does all of this change again by geo?
Target market segmentation and opportunity assessment by industry can be complex — but will yield very high returns if mastered.
Embracing the Power of Customized Market Data
Data is essential to measure business performance, competitive edge, and operational efficiency. In highly fragmented, dynamic, and complex ecosystems like IT and digital tech environments, tailored approaches are fundamental.
For market intelligence executives, tailored or custom market data is crucial to acquire the intelligence and insights to mirror the way your organization relates to the market. It’s crucial to map the market to your solutions and interpret the interdependencies while having a firm handle on the direction of global technology markets.
This will accelerate and massively improve the robustness and trustworthiness of the data used in your strategic decision-making process. Ensuring data is built on a solid methodology, underpinned by empirical research, improves confidence to invest in your strategy, yielding the best returns on all data-backed, strategic initiatives.
For businesses seeking to uphold vigorous strategic planning and maintain market relevance, investing in a trusted third-party provider that provides customized, accurate, and actionable market data is not simply good practice — it’s essential to navigate and succeed in unpredictable market scenarios and to navigate choppy waters.
To learn more about how International Data Corporation (IDC) can support your technology market data needs, please contact us.