News | Articles | Books | Organizations | Economic | Documentation | Newscenters | Miscellaneous | Espionage | Free eBooks

Economic intelligence

COOKIES

Provided as a facility built into many browsers, cookies can monitor and chronicle an individual's visit to the web sites, what they look at and how long they spend in different areas. Also, they can find out if the visitors have been to the respective site before.

By themselves, cookies will not even reveal the name and address of the visitors. The real power from cookies is when they are linked to other information. Typically, this is when registration forms are used to gain access to a particular web site.

In some situations, cookies can act as a password, or can be used to stor ongoing orders - a sort of virtual shopping basket that store items selected for purchase, even if they are amassed during several web site visits - and are activated as far as the company is concerned only when the visitor presses the buy button.

Cookies can also to present an individual visitor with personalised prefferences based on the topics it shows as having been of interest before.

Cookies are not just for web tracking but for added value. In the case of regularly visits, the cookies become part of an intelligent learning process based on what the visitor looked at before.

But the cookies were presented generally as "web spy". It is true that information gained by cookies can be swapped or sold to a third party company that centralises it attaches it to other information and a whole chunk of an Internet user's life could be available to anyone who pays for it.

We must be willing to risk change to keep apace with rapid change. The key is moderation and balance, supported by enough information to allow meaningful feedback. Going online requires adaption by management and staff in developing the necessary skills and vision. This chapter starts with how to use the networks to manage projects. Next, we will show you how to watch competitors, prospects, suppliers, markets, technologies, and trends. It winds down with marketing and sales by modem.

Project coordination

Several services offer rental of private online conference areas to businesses. Corporations are discovering that such conferencing is efficient when coordinating a group of people geographically far apart from each other.

Online conferences are also useful when team members are constantly on the move and hard together face-to-face.

Some claim that people are more candid and meetings more efficient when they communicate online. They favor online discussions for brainstorming and productivity tasks, even when individuals and facilities are available for face-to-face meetings.

Many international companies use such services regularly. The applications range from tight coordination with suppliers and subcontractors, to development of company strategies, and new organizational structures.

Renting an online conference room has advantages over doing it in-house: The company does not have to buy software, hardware, expensive communications equipment. It does not need to hire people to operate and maintain the conferencing system. The more international the business, the better is the external alternative.

Many Internet access providers offer email based distributed conferencing for private groups. Some also offer interactive, live chats in private virtual meeting rooms on the net.

For ideas about how to set up and operate a coordination conference, study how volunteer organizations do it. One place to check is KIDPLAN, one of several coordination conferences used by KIDLINK . You may read and browse the postings at  http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/kidplan.html. In particular, browse the discussion that took place between May 8, through May 28, 1991.

Making it work

Making online conferences and task force meetings work, can be a challenge. Most of the dialog is based on the written word. The flow of information can be strong. This may cause an information overload for some members.

To overcome this, consider appointing a moderator-organizer for your online conference. This person:

Adds value by setting agendas; summarizing points; getting the discussion(s) back on track; moving on to the next point; mediating debate; maintaining address and member lists; acting as general sparkplug/motivator to keep things flowing by making sure that contributions are acknowledged, relevant points are noted, new members are welcomed, silent "Read-Only Members" are encouraged to participate, and the general atmosphere is kept appropriate to the goals of the conference/task force meeting.

Great online conferences do not just happen. Those set to get the meeting fired up and keep the discussion rolling must work hard on it.

The meeting's organization may depend on the number of participants, where they come from, the exclusivity of the forum, and the goal of the meeting.

In large meetings, with free access for outsiders, the best strategy may be to appoint a Moderator-Editor. This person

filters contributions, gathers new information, summarizes scattered contributions, does background research.

Filtering may be desirable when conferences are open to customers and media. Its main purpose, however, is to help participants cope with the absolute flow of information.

A conference can have an educational purpose. You can bring in someone who can add value by bringing experience and expertise to the group.

You also need someone to do the dirty jobs everyone expects to be done - but never notices until they are not. This person keeps the show running by serving as a benevolent tyrant, sheriff, judge, mediator, general scapegoat, and by playing a role in setting the general policy and atmosphere of the meeting.

Watching what others do

Peter Drucker says (Forbes ASAP 8/29/94, p. 104):

"Most CEOs still believe that it's the chief information officer's job to identify the information he requires. This is, of course, a fallacy. The information officer is a toolmaker; the CEO is the tool user.

... the information you need -- the really important information -- you cannot truly get from your information system. Your information system gives you inside information. But there are no results inside a business."

At the heart of any profit-making company is sales. No matter how wonderful the technology or how dedicated the manufacturing staff, without sales, the company fails. To sell products and services, you need sources for identifying potential buyers. With a little ingenuity, you can probably create your own list of targeted sales leads, simply using your modem.

How would cosmetics sell in Japan? What about sneakers in Mexico? In the age of the global business community, questions about expanding product services beyond national borders abound.

It is safe to claim that the best business opportunities are outside your company, in the external world.

Companies need to watch customers and markets, find technologies to help develop and build products, research new business actions, find new subcontractors and suppliers, people to hire, and persons to influence to boost sales.

In this marketing age, where sales calls cost hundreds of dollars and business-to-business marketers use the telephone or the mails to reach prospects, maintaining complete and accurate market lists is important.

There are many other questions: What are our most important customers and their key people doing? What new products are they promoting? Who are their partners? What else may influence their willingness to buy from us?

What prices are our major suppliers offering other buyers? Should we get other sources for supplies? What major contracts have they received recently? Will these influence their ability to serve our needs?

What new technologies are available now, and how are they being used by others?

Threats are the reverse side of opportunities. What are our competitors doing? What products and services have they launched recently? Are they successful? What are our competitors' weaknesses and strengths? What relationships do they maintain with our most important customers? How is their customer support functioning, and what methods are they using in their quality assurance?

Are new trade regulations being introduced in important foreign markets?

Each company has its own priorities when it comes to watching the external environment. The information needs differ depending on what products and services are being offered, the technological level of the company, the markets that it addresses, and more.

Needs and priorities also differ by department and person, for example depending on whether a user is the president, a marketing manager, product manager, sales person, or has a position in finance or production.

Remember your priorities when online. You cannot possibly capture and digest all information that is out there. Your basic problem is to find the right information in the right form at the right time.

Consider appointing an online manager. Select and empower a central manager to oversee the process of exploiting the online resource. A "make-things- happen" person, who can also be a contact point for upper management.

Monitoring your own business

What kind of news about your company is being published? What do others say about your products and services? What kind of exposure do your new product announcements get in the media?

Monitoring other people's Web pages

By subscribing to NetMind (http://www.netmind.com/html/url-minder.html), you can get a short notification by email each time an identified Web page changes. Alternatively, you can have the Web page sent you as html mail or mail attachment. Changes in file archives (FTP addresses in URL format), and gopher resources can also be tracked.

Hook it up to your competitors' What's New or Product Description pages to stay current on changes. The service is free.

NetMind also markets the Enterprise Minder software for installation on a company's intranet. It lets you monitor competitors, internal policy changes, engineering specifications, new product releases, almost anything that is online. The product also has a highlighting feature: It enables you to receive updates for just the portions of a web page that you think are the most important, all other changes for that particular web page will be ignored. Details at http://www.netmind.com/html/enterminderfaq.html.

The Informant is also a notification service that lets you track changes in information on the Web. At http://informant.dartmouth.edu/.

You can enter several sets of keywords, like "crypto+laws+freedom+speech." At given periodic intervals, the Informant will use the Alta Vista or Lycos search engines to find the ten Web pages that are most relevant to your keywords. If a new page appears in the top ten, or if one of the previous top ten pages has been updated, the Informant sends you a notification by email.

You can also enter URLs (Web addresses) that are of particular interest to you. At given periodic intervals, the Informant checks these Web pages, and sends you email if one or more of them have been updated.

Upon receipt of a notification, you can return to the Informant for a table of the Web pages that are new or updated. The service is free. Registration is required.

Build your own, local 'database'

It does not take much effort to check one hundred different topics from multiple online sources on a daily basis. The computer will do it for you.

You do not have to read all stories as carefully as you would with printed material. Most experienced users just read what is important now, and save selected parts of the retrieved texts on local disks for later reference.

We handle printed material differently. Most of us make notes in the margins, underline, use colors, cut out pages and put into folders. These tricks are important, as it is so hard to find information in a pile of papers.

Not so with electronic information. With the right tools, you can locate information on your computer's disk in seconds.

In seven seconds, I searched the equivalent of 2000 pages of printed text for all occurrences of the combined search words 'SONY' and 'CD-ROM'! The search tool was a MS-DOS shareware program called LOOKFOR . It searched 4.2 megabytes on an 80486-based notebook computer.

With Windows 95/98 on a 233 MHz Pentium, and a powerful indexing program, the search will be completed much faster. Using AltaVista Discovery, the same search took about two seconds across over a gigabyte of documents. It found the words in web pages and text documents. The search could easily be extended to include my email archive.

During a typical work day, my personal "databases" usually give me more direct value than what I have on paper, or can get online.

My disks contain megabytes of texts retrieved from various online services, but only what I have decided to keep. My personal databases contain more relevant information per kilobyte than the online databases that I am using. Searching the data on my disk often gives enough good hits to keep me from going online for more.

You will often get better results when searching your own subset of selected online databases, than when you go online to find information. It is usually easier and faster.

On the other hand, your in-house database will never be fully up-to-date. Too many things happen every day.

Also, the search terms used for your daily intake of news will never cover all future needs. Occasionally, you have to go online to get additional information for a project, a report, a plan.

Updating your database means going online regularly to find supplementary information.

Regular monitoring gives the highest returns, and is required to get an edge over your competitors.

For beginners, the best strategy is often to start with the general, and gradually dig deeper into industry specific details. Let us review some good hunting grounds for information, and explain how to use them.

SITE OF THE MONTH:

Clipping | Databases & Forums | Localization | Monitoring | White Collar Crime | Links