Market intelligence: sources, a monthly routine and how it differs from competitive intelligence

Market intelligence is the information a company gathers and analyzes about the market it sells into: how many potential buyers there are and where, what they need and pay for, how they buy, which rules and technologies are changing, and which alternatives they choose between. Done well, it is a routine tied to upcoming decisions, such as where to sell next, what to build or how to price, and it gets updated as the market moves.

Competitive intelligence is the part that focuses on competitors. SCIP, the professional association for intelligence practitioners, defines competitive intelligence as legally and ethically gathering and analyzing information about competitors and the industries they operate in, and describes its code of ethics as guidelines for "competitive and market intelligence activities." SCIP Code of Ethics Our competitive intelligence guide covers watching rivals. This page covers the wider market: buyers, demand, rules and the people who can explain them.

Market research usually means a one-time project with a defined question. Market intelligence is the ongoing version that keeps those answers current. Market research methodologies covers the individual methods.

A worked example: warehouse robots

Suppose a startup sells autonomous carts that move goods around mid-sized warehouses. Next quarter it has to decide which three metro areas its five salespeople should focus on. The company and figures are hypothetical. The questions behind that decision:

1. Where are the most warehouses of the size we sell to?
2. Where is labor most expensive or hardest to hire?
3. Which operators are already trying automation, and what stopped the ones who gave up?

The first two questions have public answers, at least roughly. The third needs conversations.

Where market intelligence comes from

Government statistics. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns is an annual series of local data for establishments with paid employees, broken down by industry and employment size. It reports the number of establishments, employment, first-quarter payroll and annual payroll, and its most recent release covers 2023. County Business Patterns For the example, the team can count warehousing establishments with 100 to 249 employees in each metro. Dividing annual payroll by employment gives a rough average pay per employee, a first signal of where labor costs more. The data lags by a few years and covers only establishments with paid employees, so treat it as a starting map.

Regulation. The Federal Register publishes federal agencies' rules, proposed rules and notices each day, along with executive orders, and lets you search and subscribe to topics. Federal Register A saved search on your industry's terms shows proposed changes before they take effect.

Company filings. The SEC's EDGAR full-text search covers electronic filings since 2001. EDGAR full-text search Searching a phrase such as "warehouse automation" across all filers shows which public companies talk about it as a cost, a risk or a plan.

Research platforms. Paid platforms bundle filings, broker research, news and transcripts of past expert calls. AlphaSense, for example, sells a plan it calls Market Intelligence that includes company documents, broker and independent research, an expert transcript library, news and regulatory content. AlphaSense pricing Our AlphaSense pricing guide covers what is public about its cost.

Primary research. Public data shows where the warehouses are, but only the people running them can tell you whether they would let a robot near the loading dock. The main methods:

• Customer and prospect interviews on what they do today and what they have tried
• Win-loss interviews with buyers who chose you, a competitor or nothing
• Channel checks with distributors, integrators and resellers who see many buyers
• Expert interviews with operators who know how the work is done across companies
• Surveys, once interviews have shown you which questions matter. Interviews vs surveys covers the trade-off.

Primary market research and secondary market research cover each family in more depth.

A monthly market intelligence routine

A small team can run this in a few hours a month:

1. Keep a list of the decisions. Write the two or three decisions coming up this quarter and the questions that would change them. Drop any source that does not answer one of them.
2. Check public sources monthly. Review saved Federal Register and EDGAR searches, refresh any statistics with a new release, and note changes with dates.
3. Hold three to five conversations a month. Rotate across the segments or regions you are deciding between. Record each person's role, company type, what they did and what they plan to do.
4. Write one page each quarter. Say what changed, what it means for each decision, how confident you are and where each point came from (statistic, filing, interview).

In the warehouse example, a quarterly page might read: "Metro B has fewer warehouses of our size than Metro A, but four of the five operations managers we spoke to there said they could not fill night shifts. Two had tried automation and stopped because of floor conditions. In Metro A, hiring was not the main complaint. Recommend Metro B first and add a floor survey to the sales process." The figures and quotes are illustrative.

Common mistakes

• Collecting without a decision. If a source does not answer a question on your decision list, skip it this month.
• Treating vendor claims as market data. A press release about adoption is the vendor's view.
• Counting one company as a market. Three people from the same warehouse are one data point. Record the company so you can count organizations as well as people.
• Letting it go stale. Put a date on every figure and every interview note.
• Asking for confidential information. SCIP's code asks practitioners to disclose their identity and organization before every interview. Ask people about their own experience and the market in general, never about an employer's confidential numbers. What to do when an expert cannot share confidential information covers what to say.

Your next step

Write the three decisions your team faces this quarter and the questions behind each. Next to every question, note one public source and one kind of person who could answer it. Book three conversations this month with people who do the work.

If you do not know those people, Instant Expert can find people who match a description you write, such as "operations managers at warehouses with 100 to 250 employees." You review who it finds, it sends your invitations, and you pay only for calls that get booked. The directory pages for operations professionals in warehousing and warehouse automation rollout experts are one place to start.