Explain different types of business information, their sources and purposes

Web- based Information: There are many benefits of multimedia within the web-based information. It is possible to steam sophisticated content to a computer anywhere in the world. This is an advantage for many people as the information can be received and read wherever and whenever it is convenient for them, which can be critical factor for a busy executive. A significant amount of interactive multimedia content is now delivered via the internet.

What are the purposes of information? It is essential to have reliable and valid information to all businesses and organisations. An organisation without information is like someone wandering around in the dark: they do not know where they are going and if they get to where they want to be, it is more by luck than by good planning. Organisations use information for a variety of purposes that include;

• Inviting support for activities.
• Communicating sales promotions
• Offering competitive insight
• Strategic direction and SWOT analysis
• Informing future developments
• Updating Knowledge

Updating Knowledge: It is very important that businesses keep up to date with changes that are occurring within their markets. Information’s required so that businesses know:

• What new laws are being passed that might affect the way they operate.
• What the economy is doing.
• How labour markets are changing.
• How their markets are developing

This information helps organisations to make accurate decisions based on full knowledge. Incorrect decisions are likely to be the results of insufficient information.

Informing Future Developments:  Business that don’t adapt, Develop, and grow will quickly find itself left behind by the competition. But the developments need to be based on informed decisions. A business will open a new product unless it has ample evidence that the product is likely to sell.

Strategic direction and SWOT analysis:

The strategic direction is where an organisation is going over the next year or more.

SWOT (The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

 This helps an organisation decide on actions for achieving these objectives in an appropriate timescale, and frequently in a changing environment. It also allows the organisation to implement the actions, and then assess progress and results. Actions may be changed or modified whenever and wherever necessary. In order to establish strategic direction, businesses require large amounts of information from both external and internal sources. Once this information is obtained, a very useful planning tool known as SWOT analysis is used. It can also be used a tool to for auditing an organisation and its environment. It is the first stage of planning and helps marketers to focus on key issues.

Strengths could be:

• Any other aspect of your business that adds value to your product or service.
• Quality processes and procedures.
• The location of your business.
• A new innovative product or service.
• Your specialists marketing expertise.

Weaknesses could be:

• A damaged reputation.
• Poor quality goods or services.
• The location of your business.
• Products or services that are different(something that is better than the other competitors)
• Lack of marketing expertise.

(Opportunities and threats are external factors.)

An opportunity can be:

• A market vacated by an ineffective competitor.
• A new international market.
• Moving into new market segments that offer improved profits.
• Mergers, joint ventures or strategic alliances.
• A developing market such as the Internet.

A threat could be:

• Taxation being introduced on your product or service.
• Competitors having superior access to channels of distribution.
• Competitors having an innovative product or service.
• Price wars of competitors.
• A new competitor in your home market.

Offering competitive insight: All businesses need to be aware of what other businesses are doing and how they are doing things as they are very competitive and to ensure that they do not fall behind and lose sales and their market share. Communication and regular research should be able to help the businesses to assess their competitor’s sales, marketing and development activities. Some large businesses have a section of their marketing departments dedicated to analysing their competitor activity. Market research companies sometimes undertake this sort of research on behalf of an organisation. The monitoring and analysis of the behaviour of the competitors is essential for many businesses in the competitive markets.

Communicating sales promotions: There are many methods to communicate and businesses use a variety of information and methods to communicate sales promotions to customers. They pace information abet their products, services and special offers on their websites, and have newspaper and journal adverts, and television and radio adverts to. Good the behaviour patterns of customers and their buying motivations. Information can therefore help businesses to promote their goods and services and so to sell more successfully.

Inviting support for activities: Information is also required and needs to be communicated in order to support business activities. This support can come from people within the organisation or outside. Clear information will have to be given to the staff, explaining why the business needs to move in this certain direction.

What are the sources of information?

A business can gather information internally, from inside the organisation or externally, from sources outside the organisation.

Internal sources of information: This can come from all sorts of sources within the organisation. Some of the main departments are the following:

Customer services can tell you what customers think about the business and what needs to be changed to keep them happy and give you information on how the customers have responded towards the existing products and services.

Marketing can give information about the results of research undertaken by the company, the success of previous marketing campaigns and promotional activities, as well as information about the market the organisation currently operates within.

Production will be able to give details of production costs, along with past and possible future levels of production.

Human resources can provide information about the staffing and training within the organisation, such as staff turnover, number of employees, skills available, training needs and projections for the future employment.

Sales departments will often store information about customers, as well as sales records for the organisations existing products and services.

Finance will have a wealth of information relating to company performance, such as profit and loss figures, the balance sheet, cash flow information and the costs of running the business.

External Sources: This exists in the form of published materials. Collected by someone that is not in the company. There are many external resources:

Research: In the broadest sense of the word, the definition of research includes any gathering of data, information and fact6s for the advancement of knowledge. Organisations continually conduct research to find out about their markets, Customers and views of their staff. Market research always incorporates some form of data collection, whether it is secondary research or primary research, which is collected direct from respondent. The purpose of any market research project is to achieve an increased understanding of the subject matter. With markets throughout the world becoming increasingly more competitive, market research is now on the agenda of many organisations, whether they are large or small.

Commercially provided databases: Most of the private research organisations specialise in building up databases of people who are known to have certain services and products. There are a lot of market research agencies where lists may be purchased by the business that wish to target these customers via direct mail. They hope that their customers would rate them highly, as these customers on the list are known to have interest in the product.

Trade groupings: These are groups of the businesses that are from the same industry or market places that provide a service to representatives of their industry. They can act as pressure groups to initiative positive change for their industry. They also publish trade journals, which are a very useful resource these are published by leaders in industries for the people working in that industry, but they also make excellent research materials. Magazines include the following:

• Supply management- for those involved in purchasing in the industry.
• Convenience store- For those owning and operating convenience stores.
• Super marketing- For those in the retail food trade.

Government sources: These are supplied by many such as ONS (Official of national statistics), the DTI (department of trade and industry) and the OECD (Organisation for economic Development). Some of the key government publications include the monthly digest of statistics, Regional Trends and Labour Market Trends).

Reliability of data sources: When gathering information, it is vital that you determine on how the valid information is. Always ask yourself whether it is accurate, relevant and truthful, and whether there is a bias. Such as many newspapers have a particular agenda that influences the way they interpret information for their readership. So, the guardian and daily mail might report on the same story but may well take difference slants depending on each journalist’s personal opinions and the newspapers agenda.

The information that find on the internet will needs to be treated with more caution. Websites of the reputable sources, such as the BBC, or the mainstream newspapers, will be reliable-although as subject to bias as printed news. Sources like Wikipedia or personal blogs may be biased, inaccurate or misleading. For e.g. anyone can change an entry in Wikipedia-the website rely on knowledgeable readers to correct any errors? When citing information from the internet, it is good to practice to try to find the same information from more than one source. This takes a bit more time, but helps confirm your original source of information.