The Value of Information

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May 10, 1999

Large companies know that the more information they have about their industry and their markets, the better they can plan and the more successful they are. They have whole departments gathering this kind of information and they attend industry conferences, conventions and shows where more information is collected and exchanged. They can then plot trends, project tendencies, chart growth and generally see where their company fits in best.

As a small business, you won't have the time to go to a lot of these events, even if you had the money. Consequently it often seems to small businesses that they're flying blind. They don't know what's happening and they feel isolated from events in their industry. The danger is that they will miss something everyone else knows and will not be able to plan for something which everyone else is anticipating.

The Internet can help. You can subscribe to services which will send you regular e-mails on events in your industry. PC World does this for the computer industry and a limited number of other areas but there are other sites which will send out regular bulletins in almost any field. There may be active newsgroups for your industry or industry organizations may be on line with mail lists or chat. A good strategy is to be active in these kinds of forums while identifying yourself and your business clearly. Once you have a network of contacts, you can exchange information regularly and keep up to date.

Next, keep it all on file. If you are doing a lot of the information-gathering by e-mail, keeping the information in e-mail folders is a snap and the e-mail program probably has a good search function to find out the sales price of that competitor two years ago if you're considering an acquisition. That's the kind of thing you need.

Finally, here's a good, all-purpose source of links for many industries. Quicken keeps this list and it should get you started in just about any industry.

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The copyright of the article The Value of Information in Small Business is owned by Bert Markgraf. Permission to republish The Value of Information in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.