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research and the free data you did not know about

When meeting a new client, we are often asked to give them more insight in to different areas of their industry. Often our clients ask for information in the form of market reports, primary research and sector trends. These can be valuable and important resources, but can prove useless if they only produce generic results without intelligent context and insight.

We at Denvir, are aware of how important it is to really get to know our clients and become integrated with the company. Often the most powerful research is usually at your fingertips, you just don’t know it yet.

Free Data

CRM’s, sales data, website analytics, open source data and customer feedback is free data which, if the correct intelligence is applied, can result in bespoke, valuable research. Analysing customer data for a period of time can recognise key sectors, clients, time periods and regions, which can help influence key decision making and structure forecasting more effectively. Digital tools such as Google Analytics and Google Trends can show how effective your digital presence is, can offer insight in to repetitive market trends and can highlight geographic regions all helping to build a fuller picture of current and future customers.

Out with our own internal data, there are some powerful and large open source data portals such as the Office of National Statistics (ONS), a Government portal publishing thousands of data sets on a weekly basis with UK economic, industry and household data. With the right skillset and context applied these resources can be extremely powerful. The ONS also publishes census information, where it publishes a range of different results and analysis that can keep businesses up to date on the changing demography of the country.

In Scotland the government publishes selected industry data on its website across all key sectors.

Other free resources include Statista, a statistics portal with free content drawing from 18,000 resources at a world level, providing valuable macro data. Other great resources for macro industry reports include professional services companies such as PwC and Deloitte – all these are free reputable resources.

Gaining powerful insights

In today’s age of big data and constant reporting, it is important to keep on top of industry trends. Not one of the above resources alone has the ability to effectively inform strategic decision making but together they can. By bringing together robust insights from a number of sources, with some applied knowledge, companies can draw powerful insights which can make a real difference to business planning going forward.

We recognise that whilst the above data is accessible and free, it can also be daunting and time consuming to trawl through and pick out the valuable, relevant information that can be used in planning. At Denvir we are passionate about helping our clients to use this information in strategic planning and to inform decision making on a daily basis. We can identify key data sources for each sector, extract relevant information and then consolidate it into a form that can be easily digested by company management.

Denvir can help

Whilst we are not all data geeks, with more and more information and data becoming readily available with the digital age, if you aren’t making use of all the available sources, you can bet your competitor is. Stop thinking of Excel being an accounting and finance tool, but more of a data mining tool and you’ll start to reap the rewards.

Denvir was appointed onto the Marketing Expert Help framework by Scottish Enterprise in 2012, helping SME’s across Scotland with their marketing strategy and planning. A core part of our process involves extensive research into a company’s market, target market and competitor base. Using a range of tools including GAP analysis, desktop research, company report analysis and customer interviews, Denvir has been able to provide informed recommendations to over 200 companies as a result of a robust research approach.

If you would like to find out more about our range of research and insight services, please do get in touch here.