Executive summary. Delivering Maximum Strategic Value with Market Monitoring, страница 9

An EWOS is a process for scanning an environment that is broader than what the current strategy dictates. This means that it is often difficult to specify precisely which information sources should be monitored. Instead, more broad definitions can be used. For example, instead of monitoring one particular website, the process monitors any websites of a certain kind. An EWOS is often described as a somewhat fuzzy process.

When sourcing for information, an EWOS is specifically looking for weak market signals rather than market signals with a high degree of certainty. These weaker signals are often described as outliers, disruptive, unusual events, irregularities, or any hints of significant changes. It is acknowledged that many of the incoming signals are unconfirmed information, lack validation and might turn out to be false alarms. This is acceptable, because otherwise potentially valuable weak signals would also be missed.

The relevant context guiding the EWOS process is also broader than with regular market monitoring systems. Just as with sourcing, relevance of individual market signals cannot easily be determined. It is useful to start with the context and taxonomy derived from the company’s current strategy, but in the EWOS process it should be interpreted more liberally and it should be expanded with additional strategic themes that represent potential new avenues and unexplored territories.

It is also noteworthy that the competitive landscape considered relevant in an EWOS includes the whole macroeconomic environment, which is often considered less important in a regular market monitoring system. Macroeconomic developments are looked at closely when formulating new strategies, so monitoring and analyzing them should be considered an essential part of an EWOS.

The processing and delivery of market signals coming out of an EWOS process is allowed to be more provocative. Since the process will eventually lead to a reformulation of strategy, it is acceptable to challenge existing preconceptions, to raise questions rather than answer them, and to provide alternative points of view to familiar topics. From a resourcing perspective, it is important to realize that this significantly raises the bar for the resources used in the processing and delivery stages of the EWOS. The tasks require much more human work compared to a regular market monitoring process and should be assigned to the most experienced analysts available who also should be able to communicate fluently with the top management.

The time horizon considered in an EWOS is also much longer than in regular market monitoring systems. While strategy implementation usually operates with a time horizon of one to three years, strategy formulation is concerned with time horizons beyond three years.

An EWOS is also the perfect tool for supplementing other processes or tasks related to strategic planning. For example, scenario analysis is a method that is commonly used in conjunction with strategy formulation. An EWOS is just the right process for tracking scenarios and their drivers and to perform the follow-up work that is needed to make scenario analysis truly valuable.

To sum up these ideas, the following table compares the two kinds of market monitoring processes:

9 CONCLUSIONS

A market monitoring system is a continuous activity whose purpose is to collect information about the competitive landscape, to process and analyze that information, and to eventually feed it into decision-making processes in a company so that well-informed decisions can be made. While the concept of actionable market intelligence is well accepted and understood, companies often find it challenging to implement a market monitoring process that would deliver actionable and insightful intelligence. In this paper we have presented ideas on how to tackle that challenge.