Sourcing - Gathering of Intelligence

 

Before data and intelligence can be assorted, indexed and delivered it will have to be gathered from the various sources, online and off. As many as possible field professionals, marketers and intelligence users from other departments should be invited in this intelligence gathering process in order to take advantage of as many resources as possible that are at use for good reason already.

Additionally to the acquisition of intelligence material externally through online sources, intelligence portals and subscriptions services, consultants, institutes and intelligence agencies, all internal intelligence holders remain the largest and most valuable intelligence resource.

Gathering any of such intelligence material can be challenging and demanding as time pressure and intelligence quality must be driving forces behind the gathering process. Hence smooth and well established, supported processes are of material importance as well as well integrated interfaces between the various intelligence sources.

An intelligence database or portal could act as the bottleneck that would force all providers to use one single point of feed entry point. Most attention and effort might be lent to the gathering of so called soft intelligence residing in the brains and experience of sales staffers and marketers.

Understanding how to gather this rich potential would equip the intelligence pool with invaluable quality and depth of knowledge. Gathering this internal intelligence can be supported with established reporting line responsibilities, reward systems and firmly established performance tasks.

When realized how the gathered intelligence is being made available all intelligence “carriers” will be more than glad to add on to this new value added feature within the company.