There's no shortage of market and business intelligence on the internet and in print to inform and enlighten board directors and executives. Information moves at speeds that we haven't seen in the history of the corporate world. With massive amounts of data and information to peruse and sort through, it's easy to lose your way and get bogged down with useless information. Most corporate leaders rely on a few trusted resources to inform the daily grind. Others rely on their corporate secretaries or general counsels to inform them, which may mean that the information they get is limited or not helpful.
The immense amount of information that corporate leaders get can cause them to pass over much of it because of not having the proper time to sort through it all. Rather than targeting the most useful information and following it, disregarding important news and data can cause corporate leaders to form the bad habit of digesting little or nothing at all.
The good news is that technology has provided a valuable tool for getting the right information, rather than taking a haphazard or "catch as catch can" approach to gathering market and competitive intelligence. When you know why you need competitive, market and governance intelligence, and you're not happy with the way that you're getting it now, Diligent Corporation's Governance Intel is your best solution for getting the right information at the right time to ask the right questions and get the best answers.
How Is Your Board Gathering Market and Competitive Intelligence?
Anyone who has worked in the corporate world for any length of time likely has a few tried-and-true resources that they like. It's also common for corporate leaders to follow reports and other market news from such experts as Spencer Stuart, Deloitte and McKinsey & Company.
You probably also have certain industry news pieces sent to you via postal or electronic mail to bring you the latest intelligence within your industry. You also probably pick up some kind of national news to see if the latest headlines bring anything to worry about. You wouldn't be surprised if a colleague shared a story or two with you that interested them, and you might share a few back. Beyond that, you're probably on the lookout for reports and surveys from proxy advisors and other financial experts.
Even with all that, you might still be wondering what you're still missing. It's clear that you just can't get the right information fast enough to act on it and make decisions in time.
If your general counsel or corporate secretary has been good about bringing intelligence to you and that's slowed down substantially, it may be because they're both stretched too thin with all the recent regulatory changes and scrutiny with which they're dealing. Complex legal situations take precedence over gathering articles for intelligence and insight.
Does Your Board Need Governance Intelligence?
Your board needs the most current information about the marketplace and your competition to help them make informed, proactive and timely decisions. Getting the right information requires extracting the most useful information from an enormous amount of resources. That can be much like searching for a polar bear in a snowstorm.
The right intelligence equips boards to respond faster during times of crisis. During times of trouble, boards typically only get a short window of time in which they can respond. Boards that fail to respond within that window may have to deal with the fallout from a crisis much longer than normal.
Timely information also helps boards to get ahead of market developments, which enables boards to stay ahead of the competition. Not getting information in a timely manner could cause your company to miss important opportunities to grow revenue or to address harmful risks.
Governance Intelligence Informs and Empowers Boards
Intelligence and insights are more about getting the right information so that boards can ask the right questions, which forms the basis for robust boardroom debates and discussions to empower important decision-making. Intelligence helps to define the board's risk oversight role and to foster a risk-intelligent culture. The right information will help leaders to define their risk appetite and incorporate risk intelligence into their overall strategy. Intelligence also helps boards to benchmark and evaluate the governance process.
The demand to cut through the noise and decide when and how to act has prompted a new methodology in modern governance. Diligent Corporation developed Governance Intel as a valuable tool for collecting and interpreting market and competitive intel and distilling essential information and action items to help board directors make the best decisions possible for their companies. With Governance Intel, corporate leaders can now get corporate and market news all within one valuable tool.
Governance Intel takes away the barrier between open web news, subscription news and proprietary data. Imagine having the advantage of getting access to your most favored news and resources, along with the data from over 70,000 authoritative open-web news sources within the scope of a single powerful research and discovery tool.
Governance Intel eliminates the time burden of fishing through enormous amounts of data because it leverages artificial intelligence to quickly make sense of the business landscape. This tool enables corporate leaders to hone in on key insights, developments and trends. Also, Governance Intel consolidates market research and competitor insights so the board and executives can engage in the most effective strategic planning efforts. In addition, boards can use the information to create custom reports and notifications based on corporate health changes or specific events.
Modern governance is the key to getting and keeping a competitive edge. Modern governance is the practice of empowering leaders with technology, insights and processes to fuel good governance that organizations require to thrive and endure in today's fast-paced world.
The business environment is constantly moving and it's vital that boards have the right technology infrastructure in place to empower boards to establish the necessary framework to meet governance challenges head-on and to turn insights into action.
