Market intelligence and strategic foresight are merging

Do people in your organization work on both market intelligence and foresight? If yes, are the functions isolated or have you already tapped into the synergies?

We’ve lately seen an increase in questions related to these two topics intertwining. And our customer organizations are already seeking our support in merging the two functions in practice. The signals are coming in.

Competitive and market intelligence (CMI) has been a way to keep an eye on the business environment, perhaps the more “tactical” horizon, while foresight has looked beyond the immediate. Still, there are obvious synergies in the two practices starting with identifying signals and emerging trends.

To illustrate, CMI produces a lot of data that can be converted into observations for building foresight. Likewise, foresight can be used to identify emerging phenomenon to start monitoring with the CMI tools and practices. For foresight practitioners, this offers new ways to provide foresight insights to the teams and individuals who might be working more in the “here and now”. And combining market monitoring and analytics with scouting and scanning activities can prove to be quite effective.

The combined view of what’s happening now in the business environment, what the competition is doing, and where do we believe the industry (or the world) is heading can paint a vivid picture and a tangible narrative, bridging tactical and strategic thinking.

We believe that this trend is picking up speed. Integrating or even merging CMI and foresight simply makes sense in many organizations, and it offers these new kinds of synergies and opportunities.

At FIBRES, we’re taking the fist big leap towards this future as we've recently announced a new partnership with Valona, the leading platform for competitive and market intelligence.

We’ve combined the two platforms in such a way that you get to decide how deep you want the integration to go. Not everyone needs to become a foresight expert, or an CMI analyst. You can start by letting the data and insights flow between the two platforms, allowing for seamless sharing of the deliverables, and enabling further collaboration down the line. You can read more about the opportunities this partnership and integration has to offer in our blog.