Data Gathering and Data Identification

Keszey (2011) analysed environmental scanning and analysts’ attitudes. He

recommended using trusted sources and specific problems and not rumours and general scanning. It is worth considering this in the light of Swiss telecom analysts approach to the selection of key market and competitor indicator data. The respondent of Swisscom explained his way of gathering data.

“As a competitive analyst you start your day with screening the press, so what is particularly new in your industry or from your competitors in the market. So this is what you usually do in the morning until 9 o’clock the latest, and then … you start your actions based on that, you look at other information sources for instance at business reviews from your competitor, quarterly reports, or annual reports. You read carefully the reports and then from this information you collect information about a certain action of the competitor, for instance new product launches … within the next three month or so.” (Analyst 1, Swisscom, date of interview 12/02/2010)

The respondent seemed rather excited about his data gathering process, he emphasised that his scanning procedure consisted of two steps, namely to get an overview by reading the press (less trusted sources), and then reading reports (trusted sources).

Analysts 2 and 3 had a fierce discussion about data gathering processes demonstrating that data gathering and alerts was important to them and that an international

perspective was important:

“On the one hand alerts from the market, on the other hand trade register entries, if there are new firms, further building licences or building petitions for mobile wireless antennas, further employees giving us feedback whenever they hear or see something. What also occurs is that for example at frequency licence auctions one looks, who is bidding, and to whom the licence goes. These are long-term issues especially at licence auctions… But this serves very well as an early warning system.” (Analyst 2, Swisscom, date of interview 14/04/2010)

“As an amendment from my view, an early warning system is the stock price developments or other events for example rumours from the stock market, or in general what happens in the sector globally or in the European market. Often there are certain trends that start in other countries with similar structures so one can conclude this happens sooner or later in Switzerland as well. One looks at it from the technological side or has external sources analysing the latest

technologies and trends. So one can see what comes from the technological side as a threat or chance.” (Analyst 3, Swisscom, date of interview 14/04/2010)

“Exactly … for example if there are corporate competitors globally or Europe wide active markets one looks a bid outside of Switzerland to learn which are their offers within the market or new services not yet available here….. activities the sector are monitored. The Swiss market is too small to give impulses for the whole sector globally.” (Analyst 2, Swisscom, date of interview 14/04/2010) They identified alerts from the market, and stock price developments as scanning sources, and looking deeper at other - similar markets to predict own market changes.

Also the respondent of Sunrise was excited about their indicator data when stating:

“For example we are in the telecommunications business and if one of our

competitors wants to move into a new technology, this might be a danger for us, if we are not competitive without that technology in the future and therefore I think this will be important as a kind of early warning indicator that we should think about also investing in that kind of technology. [We observe new entrants through trade register entries] …. what might have an influence to our competitive

positioning in the future and therefore we also include this kind of information.

So it’s not only current competitors it may also serve for future competitors.”

(Analyst 4, Sunrise, date of interview 01/10/2010)

She was concerned about current and future competitors. Her focus seemed new technologies used by other competitors. Concerning their sources, she stated:

“Regarding the competitors’ sources in 90% we rely on the public available presentations, reports issued by the competitor itself. And those reports are subject to international requirements for example if they publish an annual report this is more or less subject to IFRS, …we have a critical view regarding analyst opinion and then we prefer some kind of other market analyst.” (Analyst 4, Sunrise, date of interview 01/10/2010)

Thus they seeded reliable sources of information, even though company reports could be out-dated. Due to their organisational structure they had just one central CI analyst team. She emphasised the advantage of that by stating:

“I think it’s a great advantage to have one point of contact where you can get in contact and tell this contact this information regarding the competitor A, B, or C and can you provide us with some analysis presentation. Do you have certain information, and I think the big advantage is to have one consolidated source, which can always change, but it’s more secure than to rely on several sources, and I think it’s more reliable because … if you have it centralised, it’s secure you are working on it, compile the information, analyse it.” (Analyst 4, Sunrise, date of interview 01/10/2010)

Comparing with the fierce discussion held in Swisscom about having good quality information, it appears that Sunrise’s central structure has the disadvantage of lacking different views.

Orange’s analyst, who was also in the position of doing CI analyses centrally stated:

We have lots of sources for information mostly publicly available information. We rely on these sources. We usually get the first partial information typically on sales and panels where you get sales data from various channels. The work of standardising and guessing what is the missing part, the direct sales – the sales from direct channels for example from a Sunrise shop – that is based on guessing and on the published annual reports. (Analyst 5, Orange, date of interview 20/10/2010)

He mentioned reliable sources and the part of guessing and figuring out, which appeared for him important for data analysis. Cablecom’s operative analyst stated:

“All indicators we have is of course market share that we can compare four times a year with all the digits available from our competitors but we know our budget and we compare on a daily or weekly or monthly base our performance versus budget or versus forecast and that not only in terms of gaining customers also the churn, and customer satisfaction.” (Analyst 6, Cablecom, date of interview 10/11/2010)

In contrast to this, Cablecom’s strategic analyst focused on several sources stating:

“Cablecom uses a variety of sources and uses them on the one hand on a

systematic way and on the other hand on a spontaneous manner. This means that we have a competitive review process, where we systematically gather all the information that becomes publicly available from competitors as Swisscom, and Orange. We gather this on a Swiss platform for the Swiss market. The publicly available sources are annual are quarterly reviews. There is also the ad hoc approach, where we find information from a variety of sources, these include for example newspaper articles, information gathered at congresses, conferences, individual rumours, stuff that comes from the market, chat between individuals.

These are much harder to consolidate into a form.” (Analyst 7, Cablecom, date of interview 29/12/2010)

Cablecom’s executive assistant added:

“Another example for ad hoc monitoring is the product launches, we receive public information about product launches from competitors, and we compare these on an ad hoc basis.” (Analyst 8, Cablecom, date of interview 29/12/2010) They differentiated between the spontaneous and the systematic way to monitor. Their spontaneous way appeared less effective according to Keszey (2011), but their

discussion showed that they thought much about data gathering. Orange’s analyst used a set of sources and had his way to collect data and provide information. In contrast, Swisscom and Cablecom reported a variety of sources and a broad range of market and competitive movement data.