A comparison of theory and practice in market intelligence gathering for Australian micro-businesses and SMEs

Recent government sponsored research has demonstrated that there is a gap between the theory and practice of market intelligence gathering within the Australian micro, small and medium businesses (SMEs). Typically, there is a significant amount of information in literature about 'what needs to be done', however, there is little insight in terms of how market intelligence gathering should occur. This paper provides a novel insight and a comparison between the theory and practices of market intelligence gathering of micro-business and SMEs in Australia and demonstrates an anomoly in so far as typically the literature does not match what actually occurs in practice. A model for market intelligence gathering for micro-businesses and SMEs is also discussed

COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

There are many challenges to face in this century. It’s an era of information. Those who have the best information are going to win the race for supremacy on the market. More and more managers are aware of the fact that they have to do something to remain on the market and to be successful. They have to adapt and to try to gain an advantage over the competitors. Nowadays, the only thing that makes the difference is the company’s competitiveness. The times when the one who had the capacity to produce more was the leader are long gone; now all the actors on every market are focused on quality and this leads to severe competition. What is left then? How can a company gain competitive advantage? The only thing that can make a difference is not the quality of the product but the quality of the information they posses about the market, the client, the product, the technological process, management etc. It’s about the information management. It’s about competitive intelligence.competitive intelligence, information, intelligence, strategy

A comparison of theory and practice in market intelligence gathering for Australian micro-businesses and SMEs

Recent government sponsored research has demonstrated that there is a gap between the theory and practice of market intelligence gathering within the Australian micro, small and medium businesses (SMEs). Typically, there is a significant amount of information in literature about 'what needs to be done', however, there is little insight in terms of how market intelligence gathering should occur. This paper provides a novel insight and a comparison between the theory and practices of market intelligence gathering of micro-business and SMEs in Australia and demonstrates an anomoly in so far as typically the literature does not match what actually occurs in practice. A model for market intelligence gathering for micro-businesses and SMEs is also discussed

Exact formulae for certain integrals arising in potential theory

Exact formulae are derived for certain integrals arising in the solution of potential problems by integral equation methods

Numerical Integration in S-PLUS or R: A Survey

This paper reviews current quadrature methods for approximate calculation of integrals within S-Plus or R. Starting with the general framework, Gaussian quadrature will be discussed first, followed by adaptive rules and Monte Carlo methods. Finally, a comparison of the methods presented is given. The aim of this survey paper is to help readers, not expert in computing, to apply numerical integration methods and to realize that numerical analysis is an art, not a science.

Increasing the Reliability of Adaptive Quadrature Using Explicit Interpolants

We present two new adaptive quadrature routines. Both routines differ from previously published algorithms in many aspects, most significantly in how they represent the integrand, how they treat non-numerical values of the integrand, how they deal with improper divergent integrals and how they estimate the integration error. The main focus of these improvements is to increase the reliability of the algorithms without significantly impacting their efficiency. Both algorithms are implemented in Matlab and tested using both the "families" suggested by Lyness and Kaganove and the battery test used by Gander and Gautschi and Kahaner. They are shown to be more reliable, albeit in some cases less efficient, than other commonly-used adaptive integrators.Comment: 32 pages, submitted to ACM Transactions on Mathematical Softwar

A survey on competitive intelligence practices for strategic decisions

Doutoramento em GestãoThis thesis aims to measure the frequency use of competitive intelligence as a support tool to the strategic decision-making in Portuguese organizations. Likewise, the thesis aims to measure the satisfaction level of the decision-maker when making decisions based on competitive intelligence. Based on an extensive literature review, some hypotheses appear to support a survey addressing competitive intelligence issues. Considering a convenient sample, the conclusions drawn about the use and satisfaction level based on competitive intelligence are as expected, as what lies beneath strategic decisions is also answered.Esta tese tem o objectivo de medir a frequência do uso de competitive intelligence como ferramenta de suporte à tomada de decisão estratégica nas empresas Portuguesas. De igual modo, tem o objectivo de medir o grau de satisfação dos decisores quando tomam decisões baseadas em competitive intelligence. Com base numa extensa revisão de literatura, surgem algumas hipóteses que suportam um inquérito sobre competitive intelligence. Considerando uma amostra de conveniência, as conclusões tiradas são as esperadas, e obtém-se a resposta para o que está por detrás da decisão estratégica.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio