A blog for Market Intelligence professionals seeking to improve their efficiency and impact.
Market intelligence teams have a huge brief; they’re responsible for supporting functions with insight-driven decision-making across your entire business, including marketing, sales, and product. They need easy access to the most relevant, insightful and trustworthy market information available.
But they don’t, and it’s slowing them down.
Did you know that 90% of the world’s data was generated in the last two years alone? It’s therefore unsurprising that the sheer amount of content to process is overwhelming your Market Intelligence teams. The function is being held back by the very thing they need to do their job.
This information overload poses a real challenge to organisations; each year, the average business spends £4.4 million searching for information. Imagine what that money could be going towards if knowledge access was improved tenfold.
The crux of the issue
Our latest research reveals that 62% of knowledge workers do not have enough time to access information effectively, and almost half (43%) are simply unable to find the information they need. Market Intelligence supports the business with critical decision-making, so how can teams be confident in their roles if vital data sits out of reach?
To make matters worse, even once your teams find the information they need, 57% of workers uncover contradictions in the data, meaning extra time is wasted trying to validate sources.
Wasted time and resources is one thing, but business risk is another. Nearly half (48%) of knowledge workers admit there has been a time when greater access to information could have prevented a business risk.
This information overload is severely impacting your Market Intelligence function and the business as a whole. Falling behind could result in expensive mistakes and loss of competitive advantage.
It’s time for Market Intelligence to move to the fast lane.
Take advantage of underused “lanes”
Every individual will have their own approach to research. Typically, this includes trusted search engines and various media outlets as the main sources of information. However, Market Intelligence teams are overlooking the richest channel of information – most won’t even know it exists.
Making up roughly 90% of the internet, the deep web holds an incomprehensible wealth of knowledge that’s rapidly expanding. That works out as roughly 150 trillion gigabytes. It covers a significant portion of the internet inaccessible through a standard web search. Unfortunately, the deep web is often viewed as a chasm of irrelevant and untrustworthy data. Or worse, it is mistaken for the dark web.
When asked about channels they didn’t have time to use, or which channels they actively avoid, nearly a third (31%) of decision makers said they avoid the deep web. More shockingly, respondents avoid the deep web over tabloids (26%) and AI chatbots (23%).
Omitting such a vast expanse of the internet means your teams are restricting their knowledge reach. As a result, Market Intelligence is too often informing critical decisions based on a fraction of the information available.
Currently, only 14% of knowledge workers use the deep web to source information. A serious lack of understanding of what the deep web is remains a barrier between workers and this vault of immeasurable value that could ultimately fuel the Market Intelligence behind strategy decisions and early business risk detection.
Knowledge workers already spend, on average, 1.54 hours a day just searching for information. There is a perception that adding the deep web to the list of sources used will only increase the time spent. However, with AI, this isn’t the case.
Shifting gears to accelerate Market Intelligence
As we well know, time pressures often dictate Market Intelligence roles. They need the right information, but they need it quickly.
Your teams need a way of accessing a diverse set of channels in the same time it takes to visit a search engine. This would open up access to additional sources without extra effort, all the while gathering insights in a much shorter timeframe.
AI-powered platforms offer a revolutionary approach to sourcing and storing knowledge. AI’s ability to scour through millions of data points in record time means teams can gain greater visibility over business risks and deeper insights into their target market trends.
Machine Learning also has a huge role to play. Trained on large datasets, this technology can be leveraged to identify patterns within data to then make predictions or decisions relevant to different market segments and business functions.
With AI, your Market Intelligence teams can automate time-intensive processes and produce more meaningful insights with less effort, meaning workers are free to support the different business functions with real-time, relevant information that could be the difference between a success and a missed opportunity.
Get our FREE report uncovering the truth of information overload in Market Intelligence, backed by 1500 interviews. Our research uncovers the truth about the limitations of existing knowledge-gathering methods, quantifies the true cost of poor processes on the business, and paves the way for a new era of information gathering:
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