The Handbook of Market Intelligence: Understand, Compete and Grow in Global Markets, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7Intelligence Tools – Collecting, Storing, and Disseminating Intelligence

INTRODUCTION: INTELLIGENCE TOOLS AS A KEY SUCCESS FACTOR OF WORLD CLASS MARKET INTELLIGENCE

When ambitiously developing MI activities, the need emerges quickly for the intelligence professionals to adopt tools and techniques to help manage the collection, processing, storage, and delivery of the information content. Frequently used tools and techniques include needs analysis questionnaires, information collection templates, and a wide variety of analysis frameworks and approaches, to name just a few. However, by far the most central tool in running a world class intelligence program is an intelligence portal; software that has been designed to support the intelligence activity both at the production end and in accessing and contributing to the deliverables. Hence we will limit the focus in this chapter to intelligence portals only.

An intelligence portal provides a single user interface to screened and organized information content from both external and internal sources. Companies around the world are using a wide range of IT solutions for the general purpose of managing and processing business information; however, the best intelligence portals have been specifically designed and developed to support the requirements of the corporate intelligence process, and the eventual configuration of the software typically follows each company’s own intelligence process flow. An intelligence portal usually ...