Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Selecting What Needs to Be Known
Figuring out the right things to know is one of the trickiest, least under-
stood, and most underrated jobs. To perform this feat requires not so
much an expertise in one or more fields, but the ability to recognize what
factors will influence the particular issue or area of concern.
The process is begun by reviewing the objectives that have been out-
lined by the CEO or management committee. For example: The CEO
of an aluminum manufacturer wants to improve sales of the company's
pop-top beverage cans. To do this requires an assessment of the pros-
pects for growth in the beverage industry. This is the obvious informa-
tion that would be required. A person experienced in performing these
audits would most certainly look beyond the obvious to, say, assess-
ing the prospects of third-world aluminum producers moving into the
canning business. Even this might be obvious to some, so we need to
go deeper into the assessment and evaluate producers of other materi-
als that could replace aluminum cans (Meyer 1987). In essence, this
example demonstrates the need to think about issues in a multidimen-
sional l way.
Collecting the Information
Once it has been decided what needs to be known, one can begin to collect
the appropriate information. There are several categories of information.
First, there is information that is already available in-house residing on
some corporate database, on local PCs, on departmental distributed data-
bases, or even on paper.
The next category of information can be referred to as public informa-
tion . This is information that is on the public record, available in the form
of magazines, newspapers, and from public agencies.
The next category is private information . This is information that is
not publicly known, but is available for a fee such as LexisNexis (http://
www.lexisnexis.com/) and Thomson Research's Investext (http://research.
thomsonib.com/).
The final category of information is what is known as secret information .
This is information privately held by competitor companies. Unfortunately,
most of this information is impossible to obtain legally, although some of
it can be gleaned from discussions with former employees of competitors,
salespeople, customers, and vendors.
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