Market Intelligence Sourcing Strategy
Any intelligence delivery and content can only be as good as its sources. Outdated information or invalid intelligence content can not only harm the entire intelligence effort but even damage business value as these intelligence glitches might lead to misinterpretation and thus wrong decisions.
Any business or organization with a market and competitive intelligence need, will know thousands of internal intelligence sources and external intelligence providers and resources. To pick the efficient and valid ones is mostly a matter of time and experience with them. To pick the right amount and mix, to balance out data with information and readily available intelligence comes close to an art.
An intelligence sourcing strategy can follow many motivations. Cost, timing, market volatility, shareholder pressure to innovate more successfully or a need to attack competition more aggressively can be some of those motivations to run the one or the other sourcing strategy.
What ever sourcing strategy might be established and entertained, letting stakeholders know (in a top level fashion) can avoid constant or repeating questions or challenges if some obvious intelligence sources do not fit in.
For example a well received and accepted intelligence portal uses RSS feed and XML scripts for uploads and news reading capabilities but one particular industry resource does not offer this technological interlinking capability, the internal intelligence users need to know why this resource is not being used. This will not only avoid frustration and credibility issues, it would also show that a careful pick is applied to keep up with most modern intelligence technologies.