Market Intelligence Organization

The organization of an intelligence unit depends on many factors. Size of operation, view points, strategy, competitive environment, target industries, markets, history, threats, risks and many other elements. Also the intelligence focus is an influencing factor for an organizational setup.

Classical market & competitive intelligence units oftentimes reside in the marketing or sales department, sometimes scattered across various business units in rather fragmented fashion, employing several market researchers and analysts.

If centralized intelligence organizations could include competitor intelligence (focusing on competing companies), not to confuse with competitive intelligence which goes way beyond looking at the competition – competitive intelligence researches and analyzes the entire competitive environment which could incorporate suppliers, raw material streams, market variables, trends and other industry indicators.

Also some corporations consolidate all their intelligence efforts in one single business intelligence unit that serves Research & Development departments or other innovation groups and tasks, Marketing & Sales teams, Mergers & Acquisition units, Legal departments, Finance and Communications.

Depending on the industry, the weight and focus might be different from company to company. For example banking and insurance sectors require much more transactional data and demographics, while consumer electronics follows many trends and related technologies.

Thus, there might be totally different priorities and view points for Citibank or General Electric for example.

As market & competitive intelligence becomes stronger amid medium sized and large corporations and organizations, some conventions start to show and it remains interesting to observe which form of organization proofs to become more sustainable then others.