Sourcing - Intelligence Acquisition
Already the intelligence acquisition offers savings potential and should establish negotiation power if combined for all requestors before feeding into the intelligence tools and processes.
Individual subscriptions to intelligence providers like portals and reports outlets, industry newsletters and market trends analysis could be combined.
Regardless what types of intelligence materials are acquired and used by intelligence users, there will always be intelligence providers that should be interested in deals negotiations. Fragmented intelligence purchases lead to cost disadvantages whereas consolidated accounts and subscriptions could be negotiated more aggressively with any intelligence provider.
Oftentimes individuals in any organization hold multiple subscriptions with online portals that provide market and competitive news, press releases and other media. While those individuals tend to neglect the rather limited spending on an individual level (“it’s just 100 bucks…”), adding up thousands of accounts with one vendor easily compares with a target subscription fee that could be much lower for the same number of users.
Consolidating subscriptions for a global company could be challenging yet rewarding when accomplished. Selling savings early enough should provide more opportunities to combine subscriptions to intelligence sources, newsletter and portals.
After establishing a complete overview of market studies, industry reports and other intelligence any consolidation effort should become fairly easy in promoting savings and accessibility effects onto the organization. However, intelligence users will only buy into the concept when being delivered the right intelligence at the preferred time and frequency.
A good way of attracting acceptance for a global intelligence system might be the provision of a global internal intelligence portal combined with other daily tools and routines such as an Intranet or CRM system. Sales staff or marketers who are used to acquire their intelligence themselves would not give up this flexibility too easily. Except if they experience dramatic improvement in receiving way more useful intelligence without time delay.
Enabling the organization for increased intelligence exchange and thus lighting the spirit of a more external focus will create supportive attitudes towards centralized and managed intelligence acquisition.