Desk research might be the most common intelligence discipline regardless how advanced the organizations intelligence programs and systems are. Published information and data, pushed by partners, consultants and MI specialists as well internal resources pointing towards external intelligence is being scoured, gathered and pre-analyzed.

Industry reports, market studies and other business intelligence are being made available in many formats and sizes. Any industry or market have their major players in terms of research, market observation and monitoring who create and provide studies, reports, overviews, key market data, trends and indicators.

Business journals and trade magazines are excellent intelligence sources for both market intelligence as well as competitive intelligence. Most importantly here, the intelligence consuming organization needs to make sense of it all. Condensing and bringing relevant intelligence into context of immediate business needs and long term market strategies are crucial elements of intelligence preparation.

Keeping customers and partners in the loop of developments and offers can be done quite effectively via newsletters that are delivered in hard copy format or electronically. Not only is this a crucial customer retention measure but a competitive tool as well where customers find another comparison opportunity across products and service offers.

A large corporation with thousands of employees hardly has any overview of how many subscriptions are being ordered and offered to staff. Subscription providers never care about consolidation. Neither do bothered employees if asked to openly acknowledge their subscriptions to market websites, news portals or periodicals.

Drop Shipping, Bulk Wholesaling, General Wholesaling, Liquidation / Overstock Sourcing are sourcing strategies that need and naturally produce a lot of intelligence both market intelligence and competitive intelligence.

Any sales force and other field operators possess and handle unbelievable amounts of external intelligence about customers, market players, associations, industries and events with all developments and dynamics. Not to utilize this vast amount of intelligence in any organizations is a major competitive disadvantage.