(4) Establishing a market intelligence practice in your company

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n the previous chapters we demonstrated that building market insights is difficult nor costly. In fact, as we have shown, many insights can be obtained with little effort and with virtually no investment. Nevertheless, chances are that you as a decision maker do not have any time to invest in this activity. You will need to rely on your employees to provide you with the insight, and if your need for market insights crosses a certain threshold you should probably consider putting dedicated resources to the task.

Easier said than done. Fact is: such a function remains in the category of overhead costs, so this naturally gives rise to a number of questions about its exact nature and the soundness of such an investment. In this chapter we will try to provide an answer to the most pressing questions that arise from this decision.