What is Targeted Intelligence?

With Businesses Under Pressure to Deliver Timely Information, Targeting Intelligence is More Critical than Ever. Part 1 of 5 in a Series.

Every day, organizations must balance complex, competing demands: making sense of overwhelming volumes of information, investing in content and technology, using data and analytics to support business decisions and delivering critical information to users when and where they need it.

Not all content is created equal, however. Making informed, deliberate choices about information—targeting the intelligence used in your organization—can transform your daily operations. Some key choices must be made, factoring in content sources, access, costs, technology and whether to keep projects in-house. Three important considerations when beginning the targeting process:

Decide which sources to include and how many users will have access to them. This can have a huge impact on content costs for the organization. In general, the more users you add and the more original or timely the content is, the higher the cost will be.
Find the right mix of sources. Organizations can pick and choose from free and paid content sources, including web sources, aggregation services, subscription sources and even multimedia or social media. Determine how to monitor the sources you choose. What is the best way to capture the most relevant information and deliver it to users in a timely, usable format, and who is the best resource to do that?

Many professionals turn to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to gather critical business information, but this method has drawbacks when left to its own devices. Without expert human intervention, results from AI tools may be redundant, irrelevant or even offensive.

Targeted Intelligence is the practice of delivering timely updates from a team who curate content using various technologies to select the appropriate information. The goal: easily digestible updates that can be pushed to a variety of channels, such as portals, widgets, mobile applications, email briefings and more.

Targeted Intelligence is a hybrid approach to information management. Instead of leaving content curation and distribution to an automated solution, information professionals curate relevant content and then provide summaries to touch on each article’s major points. This service can come from your internal team or be provided by a team of analysts familiar with your business and place in the market. Either route helps you avoid irrelevant or inappropriate content and limits the possibility that business-critical information will be overlooked along the way.Human involvement makes it possible to target key information, customize coverage, prioritize key news and sources and incorporate analysis or expert commentary. When employed, such efforts allow content to be carefully chosen and delivered to fit any given organization’s unique information needs.
Targeted Intelligence can succeed when applied to many types of coverage. Because the demands of this coverage are unique to your organization, using your own team to select and deliver content may be best. Should your team need more support, companies do provide Targeted Intelligence as an end-to-end service. Regardless, experience has shown that Targeted Intelligence can be especially fruitful when focused in on five areas:

• Competitive intelligence allows businesses to know what is being said about their competitors in the media, trade press and subscription content. Tracking the competitive landscape requires in-depth knowledge of the industry, key players, market factors and potential threats.
• Business information coverage targets trending news that could affect an industry or a particular organization. Corporate communications and market intelligence groups can both benefit from such monitoring, which frequently involves premium, non-traditional or obscure information resources. Business coverage often demands sophisticated knowledge and judgment to monitor it effectively.
• Financial information involves any developments relating to a company, its products or its executives in the mainstream media and trade press that could have consequences in the financial world. Financial coverage often requires expert insight from analysts who can manage cutting-edge technology and dynamic information with immense financial implications.
• Regional information is in increasing demand as the global economy expands and corporations have resources dispersed worldwide. Regional coverage often calls for expert monitoring, evaluation and distribution of information from lesser-known and obscure sources, including coverage in languages other than English.
• Product-specific information allows organizations to identify and deliver coverage that mentions or relates to selected products. Topic-related coverage can also target subject areas relevant to a product, such as aging research and its implications for Alzheimer’s disease treatment. Product-specific intelligence can support research initiatives, strategic planning and more.

Targeted Intelligence allows organizations to gather and deliver critical information, especially when combined with advanced technology, expert analysis and careful source selection. Whether executed by in-house staff or delegated to a service, the approach can result in more efficient, effective and tailored intelligence that supports business decisions while saving time and money – if performed expertly and according to best practices.