Every board works at its own pace. Their agendas are loaded with many issues to address in too short a timeframe. Directors have good intentions of giving each agenda item due diligence, as they should. The risk in giving items too much time is that boards can easily get bogged down in debate and get stuck in analysis paralysis. Issues that require a lot of time may get tabled over and over because of time constraints.
Modern governance requires boards to have the right information at the right time to empower better decision-making. Much of the information that boards get is unstructured, which means that it contains a lot of content that isn't necessarily heavy on substance. According to IDC, about 80% of data across the globe will be unstructured by the year 2025.
With as much information and data as board directors need to fulfill their duties responsibly, getting the information they need is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Modern governance is the process of empowering boards with the right information at the right time to enable them to ask better questions, which leads them to better decision-making.
What Is Governance Intelligence Software and What Role Does It Play?
Governance intelligence software is a system of streamlining, organizing, collecting and synthesizing information about competitive and market intelligence to enable board directors and executives to make informed and proactive decisions. Governance intelligence software brings the most informative, appropriate data and insights to corporate leaders so they can spend less time getting updated information on the marketplace and extract the most useful information.
Governance intelligence software equips boards so they can respond faster to the current happenings within the marketplace. In times of crisis, boards and executives often have a very short window of time in which they can respond. The lack of a timely, informed response can cause them to have to put out fires long after the crisis is over.
Having access to timely insights and intelligence positions board directors and leaders to where they can get ahead of the latest market developments before their competitors. By not getting timely information, boards are forced to delay action, which could lead to missed opportunities for revenue growth.
The role of collecting and disseminating intelligence and insights has been delegated to the general counsel (GC) and their legal team. The pace of the marketplace has placed additional responsibilities and pressures on corporate lawyers just as board directors are being more heavily being scrutinized. In many cases, GCs are being stretched too thin to perform all the duties and responsibilities that are required of them due to time constraints. The fast pace of market activities is forcing many GCs to prioritize their responsibilities. As a result, important and complex legal situations take precedence over ancillary duties like gathering intelligence and insight articles and making decisions about the type of materials that will truly aid boards in their work.
Understanding Competitive Intelligence, Market Intelligence and Governance Intelligence
Intel relies on actionable insights extracted from the latest competitive and market intelligence. We can better understand this by more clearly defining competitive intelligence, market intelligence and governance intelligence.
Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence refers to intelligence and insights that are focused on the business end of things. Boards utilize this information to help them monitor and measure data and developments in their decision-making, which helps them to navigate the marketplace and identify their best position within the market.
Corporations typically assign one or more employees the task of collecting and interpreting competitive intelligence and passing that information along to board directors and executives. Intelligence and insights help boards to better understand their competitors and their competitors' strategies, SWOT and market share. Competitive intelligence helps boards evaluate economic indicators, forecast returns, identify their market share and assess the scope of the market. Changes in products and services greatly impact how the company fits into the marketing platform, which means that boards have to keep a pulse on the economy, business cycle, market share, saturation and product changes.
Market Intelligence
Market intelligence focuses on customers. Intelligence and insights help corporate leaders to understand their consumers better. It gives boards greater understanding of who their customers are and provides insight for the best methods for reaching them. Insights are also a valuable way for boards to monitor customer changes in the marketplace, shifts in the market, new trends and changes in the climate. New directions in products and services may cause companies to redefine their target customer bases. Market intelligence accounts for demographics of customers, psychographics, sales and demand, and socioeconomic indicators. Social media also has great influence on the market, so market intelligence also factors in public sentiment and social chatter.
Governance Intelligence
Governance intelligence is an umbrella over competitive and market intelligence. There's no lack of business intelligence and insight. In fact, the problem is that there's such a deluge of information and so little of it is presented in a concise, digest or summarized form that it creates a host of noise for corporate leaders to sort through, which is inefficient at best. Boards need access to actionable insights, and they need it to come directly to their e-channels.
Diligent Governance Intel Software Hits the Mark
Intel software is an all-important tool in strategic planning and execution. Diligent's Governance Intel software gives corporate leaders a means for automatically monitoring and cataloging news outlets so that users can personalize the types of news from companies, competitors and industries that interest them. Intelligence and insights will help leaders to identify market trends, gauge sentiment, and evaluate risks and opportunities.
Governance Intel software incorporates business intelligence from numerous sources and sends it out via mobile devices, automated emails, curated news, summarized reports and dashboards.
Diligent provides this tool so that corporate leaders have access to corporate and market news with just one tool that combines and aggregates data from over 70,000 authoritative business new sources using a powerful search and discovery tool. The tool uses artificial intelligence to focus in on key insights, developments and trends, and create custom reports to alert leaders to corporate health changes and important events.
In essence, Governance Intel software brings the right information to corporate leaders at the right time so they can better inform board discussions and quicken the pace of decision-making. It's the modern approach to ensuring good corporate governance.
