Outsourcing market intelligence: an efficient strategy for business development

In today’s fast-paced and increasingly competitive world, mark intelligence has become an indispensable asset for many companies. In layman’s terms, “monitoring” means looking for and collecting information that is relevant to the company. Among other things, this corporate strategy enables the company to anticipate and better manage events that could upset the “norm”. It also helps managers identify strategic alternatives and opportunities for their business.

Defining objectives, choosing sources, sculpting data on the web daily and then processing it, disseminating fresh, verified information, monitoring the evolution of events in real time etc… Market intelligence is a profession of its own. To be successful, it requires rigorous organization, specialized skills and effective tools. The key skillset for this job is to know how to sort web data to retain only those that are reliable and relevant. For a variety of reasons, the task of “monitoring” may not be within the reach of every company. But in some cases, outsourcing can help. But when should you outsource your market intelligence task? And why? Should it be entrusted in full or in part to an external service provider?

Outsourcing your market intelligence: what are the conditions involved?

Market intelligence is a fast-growing phenomenon among companies; and for good reason: when done quantitively, it enables them to acquire valuable information that is essential to the development of their business. Overall, market intelligence helps managers to:

• make decisions and support their choices
• build their offers
• target customers and prospects more effectively
• being aware of new market trends
• deal with the competition
• detect new distribution channels
• uncover new business opportunities
• acquire skills

As mentioned above, market intelligence is a key process in the development of a company, but it’s still a complex task. Companies, regardless of their size, can choose to outsource this process at any time for a variety of reasons. Among the most common are:

• The lack of an in-house market intelligence structure
• Management’s desire to develop a monitoring approach within the company, starting by outsourcing this process in order to understand the mechanism, and then to be in a better position to create a dedicated in-house structure.
• Lack of time for a one-off or indeterminate work overload
• Launching new surveys on subjects or themes with which we have little in-house expertise
• The launch of new surveys on countries and languages not mastered in-house
• Management’s desire to free up time for themselves and their staff by outsourcing time-consuming monitoring tasks
• Lack of human or material resources (no access to sources of information or tools that are not readily available in-house).

As portrayed above, there are many reasons why companies outsource their market intelligence. It’s worth noting that, depending on the nature and needs of the company, it can entrust an external service provider with the entire market intelligence task, or just part of it.

Good to know: to find out whether outsourcing is necessary, here are the two questions to ask yourself:

• Do I have the internal resources and organization required for monitoring?
• Do I have sufficient visibility on key factors (scope, durability, timing) to internalize the process?

Outsourcing market intelligence: what are the benefits?

Regardless of the reason, when a company outsources its market intelligence, it not only solves a set of problems, but it also gains numerous benefits. These benefits are cumulative and greatly contribute to the company’s development.

Saving time

It’s a fact: by choosing to entrust a task to an external service provider, a company inevitably frees up time. The space gained on your calendar enables managers and staff to concentrate on higher value-added activities.

Saving on costs

For a company, market intelligence involves certain costs, which can sometimes be more or less high. In-house, this process requires the mobilization of human and material resources (software licenses, subscriptions to paid sources, copyright, infrastructure costs, etc.). As a result, it is often more profitable for a company to outsource its market intelligence than to conduct it in-house.

Ensuring the job is well done

When a company outsources its market intelligence to a service provider, a specialised, multi-disciplinary team takes charge of the work involved. They have in-depth knowledge of the intelligence field, and of the technical skills that are essential for meticulous, reliable intelligence. Analyzing the business, cross-referencing data, ensuring the integrality of the information gathered, translating, formatting and disseminating elements, and so on are just some examples of the tasks. In the hands of professionals in the field, market intelligence can only be well managed.

Contact us

At ProContact, we work closely with you to incorporate this solution into your business strategy. We can offer you an unprecedented adaptation of your way of working thanks to the arrival of resources located elsewhere, without losing time, money or quality.

ProContact is more than a contact centre. Thanks to trained, qualified, hand-picked and multilingual agents, we enable the companies that choose us to gain credibility and, above all, to satisfy their customers, regardless of the situation and in complete transparency.

Outsourcing has become a tangible and concrete business strategy for a company’s development. To find out more about our services, click on our contact form, send us an e-mail or call us on (+33) 1 84 76 24 03.