Sunderland Software City

Gareth Powell, Sunderland Software City Intelligence Service

In our latest blog, Gareth Powell from Sunderland Software City’s Intelligence Service spells out the crucial role in any business in thoroughly understanding your market, your customers and your competitors and how the service can help.

You don’t know much about your business.

If you’re reaction to that is a defiant ‘Yes I do’ then indulge me… go ahead and write down a list of all the things you know. Then ask yourself how many items on your list are facts, how many are you’re best guess and how many are, in the cold light of day, what you’re hoping.

If you still think you know everything about your business, your competitors and your staff then great. I’m jealous!

The reality is however, that if you’re a start up, a pre-start, an entrepreneur or even someone with a great idea there is a great deal about your current and future business that you just can’t know.

The Sunderland Software City Intelligence Service can help you here. We recognise that even within the UK software sector there are so many factors influencing business performance that rather than try to fill your business plans, presentations and pitches with ‘facts’ we suggest that a better approach is to develop a multi-sensory awareness of your competitive landscape. This means finding the best sources of information and understanding what they really mean in your context.

Time invested in getting a feel for where you’re located in regional, national and international economies, how new and future legislation might affect you, how technology developments may close off or open up new opportunities and how changes in social contexts may make business tougher or more profitable can yield real returns. Having a realistic awareness of context and future opportunities is also an important part of making your business investible.

The Intelligence Service can support you in acquiring such an awareness by hunting out the most reliable sources of information, recognising trends, identifying your competitors and collaborators and much more.

Sunderland Software City’s Intelligence Service is a rapid research facility while will help software businesses get a better understanding of their market, their competitors and their customers.

The service is free to qualifying companies, and can provide results within 48 hours. For more information, email the service direct.

Coming soon: The Intelligence Service shares the recent findings of its research into the global mobile applications market.