Marketing Opportunities And Marketing Research Reports.

Business intelligence (BI) and the technologies that support it are broad in scope. A generalization of the discipline might characterize BI as a series of advanced information manipulation tools that rely upon:

• Cogent questioning from management

• Access to the entire set of data contained in diverse repositories scattered across business functions

• Analysis of results of queries

• Effective reporting of the information uncovered and/or analyses performed on the information

• Iterative refinement of the above

• Effective decision making

This LifeTip examines one aspect of this BI process – marketing analysis as it applies to decisions and opportunity identification.

Pursuing opportunities in the marketplace involves weighing possibilities, probabilities and finding comfort areas that match one’s business appropriately. The obvious opportunities have already been identified to some degree. So, realization that the quest must be geared to finding hidden or subtle items is critical. Also, experience indicates that such opportunities are frequently laced with informational uncertainty. These observations clearly demonstrate why sophisticated technological (read as, BI) tools must be employed.

How to proceed quickly comes to mind. A good start is to properly prepare the information resource query. What answers are desired will drive the search process. In marketing, some of the questions involve managing, measuring and calculating ROI (return on investment), inquiring as