Over the years I have sat through numerous sessions on how to find market intelligence. They have provided me with many ideas and ways of finding leads and information about the A/E/C(Architectural/Engineering/Construction) industry. Since that beginning, the way information is available has changed. One thing that has not changed is that gathering this information for our firms is not a one person job. No matter how hard any of us work on it, no matter how much time we have to devote to it, there will always be more out there than one or even a team of people can gather for a firm. So we have to decide what things best suit our purposes. There are many ways to find information, below we address a few of the most successful and useful ones.
One of the oldest forms of learning things is from those we come in contact with. Even before people learned to write, we were sharing information about everything from what others were doing that they shouldn’t be to events in distant communities and their governments. We come in contact with people daily. Most of us have come to call this sharing of information “networking” and the people we share information with our “network”. While, this is not a totally accurate description of networking, it is one component. Overtime those in our network come to know the things that will interest us and if we have taken care to fill the right relational “bank accounts” then they will share the information with us.
An extension of the networking is to create a specific group or groups within the network where leads, information or industrial concerns are shared. Over the years I have come to call these “tips” groups, but it may actually have nothing to do with tips. The purpose could be the sharing of any of the types of information about our businesses. Whatever the purpose, these groups work best when competition is minimized. With associations we expect to have our competition involved and we try not to let it become an issue of concern. We just do not talk about things that could be of strategic concern with them. But in a “tips” group, since the purpose is or could be gathering information of strategic importance, it is necessary to take the competition out of the equation. By putting together a group or groups where none of the members have competing interest, this allows for the free flow of information and possibly situations where work can be pursued together.
Another extension of networking is Social Media. There is more to know about social media than can be discussed here. One of the ways in which many of the social media sites are useful is intelligence gathering. By monitoring groups on different sites such as LinkedIn and Govloop much information about trends, issues and even potential opportunities can be found. Additionally, Twitter is filled with industry news and trends no matter what the industry. All we have to do is find the right people/companies to follow. It is not that likely that many jobs will be won or given to us on social media, but the connections made and the intelligence provided through those connections can be invaluable. Remember, this requires time and effort so the extent of involvement should be weighed carefully.
Through the years, many of us have come to know the value of trade journals and other print media to find trends, news and even some leads. We have also come to realize over the years, that digesting all of the things we would need to get the information we want would be next to impossible. While these journals and other print still have a purpose in print form, much of the same information is available in digital form. Yet finding it and digesting it still presents the same challenge. The trick is to have way to smelt it down to a form that won’t occupy all our time. One way of doing this is through tools such as Google alerts. Other such tools are available out there but Google alerts works well to get daily feeds on almost any subject that you wish to follow. By following companies, cities, people, even key words there is much information that can be brought right to our desk top that can then be very easily scanned and digested. It is important to choose how often to receive the information because it can become overwhelming.
There are many sites, from websites to jobs posting sites which contain information that can be useful in understanding our markets. There are even companies that will boil much of this down for us to help us more easily understand and get to the meat what is on these posting sites and websites. But these can be expensive and as we all know we do have budgets
This has scratched the surface of the ways to gather information and there is already more to do than seems possible. The real trick is to make sure that whatever we do, we target things that will get the information our companies need. Gathering the wrong information at the expenditure of time and money is worse than having no information at all.
