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CHAPTER NEWS SCIP Colorado Chapter Presents: Mining Local Sources for CI
In this complimentary presentation—offered by the SCIP Colorado Chapter and hosted by Ballard Spahr, LLP, Denver, CO on Tuesday, January 24, 2012—Marcy Phelps, author of Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Information, offered tips and techniques for incorporating low-cost or free information about local demographics, economics, companies, people, and issues into your competitive intelligence projects. Going local, using sources from or about small geographic areas, provides valuable insights into competitors, customers, and the environment in which they operate. As skilled searchers know, however, adding the element of geography to any research project creates new challenges. Fewer sources cover local areas, and it's often difficult to identify those that do. Fifteen professionals from a broad range of industries and services, as well as a few students, listened as Phelps shared strategies for ferreting out local information and acknowledged what data is and is not available at the local level. The reality is that even the most thorough CI practitioners come out of local data collection efforts with information close to, but not quite, what they were searching for. Phelps emphasized the need to begin your search with an open mind, and to be creative about how to reach deeper for more information. Based on the Q&A, it appeared that many of the audience members have already forayed into mining local sources and were looking for new and innovative ways to do it better. Phelps did not let them down, bringing a few new sources and helpful ways of strategizing to the table. “Overall, the presentation was informative and well-received. I highly recommend Marcy Phelps as a speaker for anyone interested in enhancing their CI data collection with local information. About the speaker Marcy Phelps, Founder and President of Phelps Research, provides business research and analysis clients use for understanding their competitors and markets. She is a past-president of the Association of Independent Information Professionals and the current Chair of SLA's Advertising & Marketing Division. Phelps is a contributing editor for FUMSI, a FreePint publication and the author of Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Information (Information Today, Inc., April 2011). Phelps blogs about turning information into insights at www.MarcyPhelps.com. She also publishes ResearchNOTES, a monthly email bulletin with tips and sites for web searching, at www.phelpsresearch.com/researchnotes. About the author Tom Seward is the manager of Business Information at Ballard Spahr LLP, a law firm of more than 500 attorneys in 13 offices nationwide. Before joining Ballard Spahr in 2004, Seward worked in business development and data management for Kids in Need of Dentistry, Daniels Fund and Sherman & Howard LLC. A certified paralegal, he holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.L.I.S from the University of Denver.
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