What we do
Most researchers get quite anal about how they do what they do. In our darker moments so do we, but essentially it boils down to whether our market Maps ring a bell.  Our clients usually come from the markets we analyse – and this keeps us disciplined and honest.

We are confident that we know more suppliers in a market than even most suppliers within it do.  We are certain that we have quantified it better than any one else. And we know for a fact that compared to other researchers we put much more experienced practitioners into the analysis process earlier and for longer.

Supply & Demand
Research reporting typically focuses on the well known demand side of the economic system –ie what clients say they want and how they want it. There are plenty of firms who do this exceptionally well, and it is not the function of our Business Intelligence services to replicate this.

Market shares, competitive structure and market intensity are issues which are best described from a supply-side economics perspective.
In essence this means applying some rigorous disciplines to competitor and market analysis.

Market share is important as those who grow it are much more likely to achieve and sustain higher profitability than those who don’t.

Competitive structures are important as they can lead to illegal activity (being dominant in a market is not illegal, but abusing a dominant position is, for example).  They also show whether the market in question is behaving like a fast flowing river, a limpid pool, rapids or the high seas.  Sale growth of, say 10%, means nothing unless you know whether that’s exceptional or under-performance and by how much.

Market intensity shows whether new entrants can appear easily or only after a long and expensive haul, whether there are monopolies, duopolies or oligopolies at play.  Being in the middle of a scrum requires different tactics, people and energy to being in the shadow of a giant who may roll over in their sleep at any time.

In tandem with good, focused demand side research, the supply side intelligence can help you understand the challenges ahead fully.  But we recommend starting from where you are – a picture which only supplies side intelligence provides.

Expertise
Most enterprises watch a few direct competitors closely, another dozen or so to some degree and know of another couple of dozen more.

Flying by the seat of your pants is fine, as far as it goes.  Intelligence from interviewees, defecting clients, sales gossip, etc all helps, but you need to keep it grounded in facts.

Most managers also over estimate the impact of the competitors they know and under-estimate the competitors they know less well.

Getting the facts straight is a matter of being methodical about identifying, quantifying, categorising and tracking all of the suppliers who can make rival or better claims to the pocket share of your preferred clients.

Typical industry classifications are largely useless in compliance markets.  Most compliance firms simply do not fit a standard industry classification category.

Details of taxonomies, etc are beyond the scope of this introduction, but we have spent decades refining our categorisations of suppliers.  We are confident that it is flexible enough to deal with a Wikipedia world as well –primarily because the defining characteristic of compliance specialists is their ability to adopt aspects of all sorts of other business models and competencies to their own.

Analysis of financial accounts is central to our expertise, and we prefer to rely on those who have generated accounts as line executives for decades, than pure analysis by accountants. By way of example – it is virtually useless to measure compliance markets using asset based ratios.  These are people based markets where the number of new entrants is more important than the fact that one or two have kicked off with a few million in the bank.

All of our analysts have been directors, senior executives and practitioners in the markets we analyse.