6 steps to effective technology watch
Technology watch is an essential activity for all companies seeking to develop or maintain their competitive edge.
At a time when businesses are changing at breakneck speed and many markets are subject to fierce competition, it is vital to keep an eye on innovations, knowledge and emerging know-how in your sector of activity.
Properly conducted, monitoring is a powerful tool for any company wishing to strengthen its capacity for innovation. It makes it possible to gather relevant information at the right time, and to provide an overview of developments in a market, its players and its technologies, in order to inform decision-making. Its role is therefore eminently strategic.
What exactly are the challenges of technology intelligence? And how can you effectively implement this approach, whether you're part of a dedicated technology watch unit or a strategic corporate department? Let's explore these topics without further ado!
What is technology watch?
Definition of technology watch
Technology watch is a business intelligence activity. Among the different types of intelligence (commercial intelligence, competitive intelligence, etc.), it is a key component of strategic intelligence.
The purpose of technology watch is to gather and accumulate knowledge in order to draw up a map of the market in which a company operates. It helps to :
- identify other companies and what they are doing,
- identify the players (competitors, partners, investors, suppliers, etc.) and their interactions,
- locate them geographically,
- check changes in standards,
- detect major trends and even anticipate future advances, etc.
It focuses in particular on developments and innovations of a technical or scientific nature. It may concern :
- products or services
- manufacturing processes
- know-how
- materials
- information systems, etc.
The sectors of activity concerned are generally those of cutting-edge technology, where there is a constant need to innovate, but also those marked by a high level of research activity (such as aeronautics, pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc.).
Like all classic intelligence processes, it is based on several essential phases, which are described in more detail below:
- searching for information
- data collection
- sorting and organising information
- studying and analysing it,
- disseminating the results.
Technology watch: examples of the focus of technology watch
Depending on the objectives set, a technology watch approach integrated into an innovation strategy can focus on different aspects. It can focus on :
- competition: the aim of competitive intelligence is to observe the work carried out by competing companies, the products they market, competing industrial know-how and processes, etc. It analyses :
- their competitive advantages
- their strategies,
- patent databases, a valuable source of information for keeping abreast of concrete advances in a sector.
- Research: R&D monitoring enables us to assess technologies in the development phase and the stage they are at. It focuses on technical and scientific sources of information, such as :
- theses
- research work in progress
- scientific studies and publications
- data from research centres and universities.
- Markets: market monitoring enables all the target markets to be represented and summarised. It enables you to monitor :
- developments
- trends
- upcoming changes in a technology sector.
- standardisation: regulatory monitoring provides information on standards in force or in the process of being created. Companies in a given sector can form standardisation committees, which enables them to monitor what is about to be put in place and to take part in the work aimed at establishing future standards.
The challenges of technology watch
Why do technology watch? This activity is of fundamental importance for monitoring events likely to have a major impact on a business or sector of activity.
The issues involved are not only of concern to technology watch units, but also to business units and the company's strategic departments (marketing, sales, finance, etc.), which have a major interest in exploiting key information on technological developments.
Here are the main advantages
- having a reliable and constantly updated strategic information base;
- to gain a better understanding of their environment, innovations in their sector and the relationships that make it up;
- observing what already exists and drawing inspiration from it to innovate in turn: by identifying a gap or a need, finding solutions and opportunities for improvement;
- identifying weak signals before our competitors do, so that we can react quickly and agilely;
- make more informed choices and, depending on the situation, (re)define your strategic direction.
How do you conduct technology watch? 6 steps to follow
Step 1: Identify the objectives of the watch
Whether you are setting up your watch or reorganising it, start by determining your objectives by listing your needs in a document:
- Why are you monitoring?
- What key information do you want to get out of it?
- targeted at a particular sector or business?
- on technologies?
- Price models?
- Geographically?
- patents?
Choose your approach, bearing in mind that this information will feed into your various marketing, sales, innovation and other strategies .
So make your monitoring objectives clear and align them with your priority strategic objectives.
Step 2: Formalise your intelligence activities
Once you have aligned your needs with the company's strategy, you need to formalise your monitoring activities, and in particular allocate the resulting tasks.
- Start by deciding whether this monitoring function will be the role of full-time " watchers " associated with a company department (marketing, R&D, etc.), or that of specialists from outside the company, such as specialist monitoring centres. You can also use a hybrid option.
- If you decide to run a monitoring project within your company, mobilise dedicated resources. The team you put together may include researchers, information specialists and documentalists, but also scientific writers and analysts, who will be responsible for detecting, providing, analysing and then disseminating information.
- Put in place the means to access information. Start thinking about your knowledge management too.
- Think collaborative! Monitoring will be more relevant if it is carried out in a cross-functional and collective way, and if its results are shared effectively within the various departments, including management.
Step 3: List the relevant sources of information
Next, decide where you want to focus your research, based on your objectives: which areas, which key companies, which sectors, which technologies, etc.?
List all the relevant sources of information for this purpose:
- specialist journals
- articles and blogs by experts
- scientific publications
- patent databases, such as that of the European Patent Office (Espacenet),
- conferences and trade fairs, etc.
Faced with the mass of information to be processed, make sure you clearly define your search perimeter, so as to extract the most relevant and 'actionable' information for your organisation.
To do this as efficiently as possible, you can draw up an information gathering plan to guide your research. Identify queries, starting from the broadest to the most specific, so that you can gradually refine them, following a funnel logic.
Step 4: Use effective technology watch tools
Technology watch can be based largely on web tools. A few good practices and interesting configurations can help you to be more effective:
- advanced search commands on search engines, to refine your searches according to different parameters (document format, dates, essential keywords in the title, etc.) ;
- Google alert systems to track specific keywords, so that you are informed when new content is published in relation to these queries;
- Subscribe to newsletters to get a digest of essential information about interesting sites and blogs;
- RSS feed readers to keep track of new articles published from the same source;
- social network subscriptions, to be notified of the activity of the personalities and accounts you follow.
Specific tools, such as marketing intelligence software, can help you gather information, analyse it and make use of it.
Step 5: Analyse the information
For technology intelligence to be relevant, it's not enough to gather a large amount of reliable, up-to-date information. It is essential to sort, store and organise it so that it can be used by your department and/or your company.
Analysing and synthesising the information will give it meaning so that it can be used for strategic purposes:
- What are the dynamics of a given sector?
- What are the threats in a given market?
- What opportunities exist?
- Is this the right time to launch new R&D activities?
- What investments can be made? etc.
Tools such as the Geotrend business intelligence platform help you to analyse more effectively and make the most of strategic information more quickly. By mining the web using keywords provided, it compiles and exploits the essential data on your market and its ecosystem. The solution offers ready-to-use results, in the form of a summary map, to speed up decision-making.
Step 6: Share the results within the company
Once the analyses have been carried out, it's important to share the results within the company. Ask yourself what are the best ways of doing this and the most appropriate frequency, depending on the specific needs of your organisation.
Monitoring information can be passed on :
- at information meetings with the departments concerned,
- during presentations to decision-makers,
- by means of a summary drawn up and communicated to the whole company,
- via a shared press review, etc.
It may also be wise to consider using dedicated software to manage the collection, storage and transmission of information. To do this, turn to collaborative tools such as :
- collaborative platforms
- knowledge management tools.
Boost your innovation potential with technology watch!
Whether the technology watch project is carried out in-house or entrusted to external specialists, its implementation requires methodology, rigour and organisation.
The choice of high-performance tools will be decisive in collecting the most relevant information, storing it and disseminating it in the best possible way.
All that's left for you to do is go into intelligence mode to unleash your capacity for innovation!
Article translated from French