Demonstrating Market Intelligence Dashboards on Intelligence Plaza 7

Aleksi Grym, Director, Products & Services at Global Intelligence Alliance shares his thoughts with us.

What do you see as the key benefit of dashboards for market intelligence professionals?

"There is so much information out there nowadays that it puts the onus on market intelligence teams to get access to up-to-date news, data, tables and charts quickly, shortlist them and push out the right intelligence for different parts of their business.

Today, many large international organizations use business dashboards to track key indicators and market signals. Dashboards can give businesses almost instantaneous visibility into how they are performing. You can say that they are used to filter the most important information that is needed on a regular basis to the top, so informed decisions can be made.

Practically speaking, dashboards are a great way to combine information from many sources into one view. In Plaza 7 you can have both shared dashboards, which an administrator can assign to a group of users, or you can create your own personal dashboard."

Tell us a little more about Intelligence Plaza 7.

"GIA's Intelligence Plaza is a software solution for managing a company's market and competitive intelligence process.

Being like a "market intelligence engine" which handles both the inflow and outflow of information about markets and competitors through its web user interface, we wanted Plaza 7 to offer a user-friendly dashboard that internal clients throughout the entire company will find easy to navigate.

While dashboards have been around for a while, in the area of business intelligence, there are not many market intelligence dashboards on the market. Plaza 7 addresses this gap and provides an easy-to-use dashboard for data about the external business environment. So instead of looking at your own sales data, you can get an overview of competitor market shares, industry trends, and latest market developments."

Can you demonstrate how this works please?

"In essence, a dashboard is made up of content parts. Each content part is a box where you can show different information. The best way to use a dashboard is to dedicate it for a specific function or perhaps a special topic. In our example, a fictional company called ACME has three different dashboards. The default dashboard is called "Market overview". It collects data from various data sources and shows them in multiple content parts. In one view, you can get a good understanding of the market landscape."

ACME also has a dashboard for a special topic that is important for the company: iPad. On this dashboard, there is a content part that uses the "saved search" functionality of Plaza to collect content related to iPad from various modules. There's also a video coming from an external source, in this case YouTube. In the bottom corner, there is an RSS feed.

These are some examples of the out-of-the-box content parts in Plaza 7, but it's also possible to create completely customized content parts for specific needs. By focusing on dashboards and content parts, instead of building entire new web applications, customization work becomes significantly less expensive."

What is the process of setting Intelligence Plaza 7 in general?

"The set-up project starts with needs analysis and specifications. This is a critical step since you don't want to spend money implementing a system that doesn't meet your requirements. Since GIA has already done this type set-up work with over 100 companies worldwide, we have good tools and templates to make this part of the project efficient and productive.

After about two weeks, it's already possible to launch what we call a pilot project. During the pilot project, work is done with a smaller group called "pilot users" who help in optimizing the system by test-using and giving feedback. The administrators of the system are also trained during the pilot project. The pilot usually lasts for about two to three months, after which the service can be launched to the entire target group that typically consists of 100-500 users, but can be scaled to the entire organization.

Once Plaza 7 with several content modules is set up, users can immediately create dashboards using a simple drag-and-drop editing tool. Administrators can also set up information feeds that can then be shown on users' dashboards."

Author: Hans Hedin, Vice President, Business Development, Global Intelligence Alliance

This article and others from GIA's World Class Market Intelligence practice can be found at Global Intelligence Alliance Insights and Analysis