Better Market Intelligence with Smart Search anaging uncertainty and risk in business requires a 1 Mcomprehensive market intelligence approach. But maintaining ongoing knowledge of competitor activity/strategies, not to mention the latest legal and regulatory shifts and economic factors, is more difficult than ever before. Defining a competitive set has never been more complicated A clear view of your competitor landscape is essential. Unfortunately, comprehensively tracking competitors can be imprecise and hard to measure when competitive lines are shifting such as:
Entrenched players expand into a new vertical (e.g., Amazon buys Whole Foods)
Disruptive startups radically change a competitive landscape overnight (especially since disruptors are hard to track due to a nascent digital footprint). Information overload + data fatigue Historically, market intelligence programs operated under the belief that analysis of competitors could be based exclusively on publicly available information.1 While some high quality secondary sources of A wealth of information information—for example, broker research—are not is a double-edged sword. free for the general public, it is true that a wealth of It creates noise, making it information about companies is readily available on difficult to hone in on the the Internet. most relevant information But a wealth of information is a double-edged sword. to your precise interests. It creates noise, making it difficult to hone in on the most relevant information to your precise interests. It’s easy to publish unverified, uncited information, making it too easy for a company to push a strategic communications message that’s impossible to verify (for example, “We’ll be first to market with this cancer-stopping drug”).
1 https://www.stiernberg.com/media/files/Stiernberg_Q209_Whitepaper.pdf In short, to gather actionable intelligence from the wealth of data 2 available, you must be:
Confident in the data and clearly cite the source of it
Able to quickly conduct advanced searches to sift through the noise. Constantly changing environment One consequence of information overload is paralysis, and in a constantly changing environment inaction can be deadly. Whether you’re reacting to a competitor’s acquisition or a sudden regulatory shift, the difference between a few days (or hours!) executing your next move can make the difference between a winning strategy or not. The rapid and ongoing changes to environment also necessitate an ability to search quickly through a body of content to find the most relevant sources of information, fast. Challenges of using Google searches for market intelligence Google is not a B2B search tool. Whether you’re looking for partnership opportunities, scouting potential acquisition targets, getting intel on emerging companies in order to advise leadership, or just stalking your competitors, a search engine should give you fast access to company information in the fewest possible number of clicks. Google is free but has limited utility for company search. If you type in a company name, you’ll need to scroll past ads to get to the company’s site where you may or may not be able to quickly surface a financial snapshot, an employee With Google, even if the count, office locations, etc. Further, you won’t be able top results were salient and to independently verify much of the information on the very timely, you’d only see company’s site. a point-in-time snapshot of trends in the space. Things get even worse if you’re trying to run a thematic search and get smart quickly on an emerging technology or trend impacting your business. For example, let’s say part of your market intelligence effort requires you to quickly get up to speed on the latest cryptocurrency trends. You could run a Google search for “crytpocurrency trends”: 3 In this case, the top results are stale content from industry publications. But even if the top results were salient and very timely, you’d only see a point-in-time snapshot of trends in the space. The data you gathered would quickly be outdated. You could realize this and decide to go a step further, setting a Google alert for “cryptocurrency”. This could be a helpful way to stay on top of new emerging cryptocurrency trends on an ongoing basis, to an extent.
But one major flaw would be an inability to capture the variations in how the trend will be referenced in future news hits and research. To continue with this example, there are many synonyms associated with cryptocurrency, including specific currencies such as Blockchain and Bitcoin, as well as technical language associated with the topic like “distributed ledger” that might be mentioned in formal filings, etc. It’s unlikely a Google alert would capture that. How smart search technology can augment 4 Market Intelligence efforts Smart search technology, powered by Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, can expedite and drive more thorough market intelligence efforts, allowing you to access high quality data points that can drive actionable insights, and overcome the “marketing veil” surrounding companies and trending technologies, to make more strategic decisions.
READING DOCUMENTS AT SCALE We’ve established that there’s a wealth of free information available on the web to support your market research and competitive intelligence efforts. But of course a person couldn’t sift through the tens of thousands of relevant documents every day. If you’re tasked with a Smart Search technology specific market intelligence request, you might resort allows for a search engine to CTRL-F-ing your way through document after to read documents like document in an effort to piece together a narrative a human would but at a around one of your competitors. speed a human can’t. Smart Search technology is the ability for a search engine to read documents like a human would but at a speed a human can’t. This technology can be further enhanced by algorithms that sort results for relevance. These algorithms can weigh results based on things like:
Where keywords appear in a given search result (the title vs a footnote, for example)
The number of times it is mentioned. If you want to conduct very granular keyword searches, ideally you would use a technology that allows you to control the proximity between relevant keywords you’re searching. This can reveal relationships between topics or themes that might otherwise be missed. It’s like “CTRL-F” on steroids.
RECOGNIZING SYNONYMS The variation in how humans write and talk about terms, technologies, themes, etc. can create a massive obstacle when trying to have a comprehensive understanding of what’s happening in a market. While an extremely long Boolean search string could produce 5 results, it’s faster and more foolproof to use search technology that can recognize synonyms. Smart Synonyms technology can expand keyword searches to include synonyms, while screening out incorrect results for keywords with multiple meanings. Smart Synonyms apply to financial, accounting, business, industry, geographic and thematic concepts, driving superior search results. To return to our cryptocurrency example, a smart search of “cryptocurrency” mentions would not only surface mentions of the word “cryptocurrency” but also surface mentions of specific cryptocurrencies such as Blockchain, as well as the technical language ‘distributed ledger.’
distributed ledger Ethereum peer-to-peer cryptocurrency Bitcoin authentication decentralized cryptography Blockchain trusted timestamping
EMAIL ALERTS In order to maintain ongoing awareness of the latest developments related to trends or companies you’re following, it’s essential to create email alerts. Select a platform that allows you to get email alerts Select a platform that allows delivered to your inbox in real time, daily or weekly, you to get email alerts every time there’s a relevant mention of a company or delivered to your inbox in theme you’re following. real time, daily or weekly, every time there’s a relevant This way, you’ll never miss a significant update that mention of a company or happens outside of business hours in your geography. theme you’re following. Ideally, any email alert you set should not only alert you that a certain trend has been mentioned, but also include relevant snippets pulled from source materials so that you can quickly review and get context for the mention right away in your inbox. MONITORING TRENDS OVER TIME Looking at a company’s 6 presentations from the last quarter can give you some insight into what their top priorities are currently. But because much of the information can’t be cited or verified with another source, the analysis you can conduct is limited. Unless, that is, you are able to analyze many quarters of company presentations. Analyzing company presentations over time can really illustrate:
How their priorities have shifted over time
How their vision/mission has evolved
Any red flags—leadership changes or other issues. Since many companies only leave their company presentations public for 1-2 quarters, you can either maintain a local library of downloaded past presentations, or invest in a search provider that also maintains an archive of company presentations.
Managing uncertainty and risk has never been more complex, so augmenting your efforts with smart search technology can result in more proactive market intelligence. Using Smart Search technology results in more comprehensive market intelligence efforts.
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