HI: Spotlight
Our blog shines a spotlight on different topics of interest to our community, including how we approach questions from clients, research tips and tricks, celebrating HelloInfo milestones, and more!
A day in the life of an Analyst at HelloInfo
Chances are, you know an Analyst, have met one, or have noticed one talking on television, being interviewed in newspapers, or authoring articles in industry sources online. Individuals can be Business Analysts, Systems Analysts, Data Analysts, Financial Analysts,...
Level up your SWOT – consider TOWS instead!
Whether you are a small start-up or a corporate enterprise, strategic research and intelligence can support your company in maintaining market competitiveness and reaching long-term objectives. There are several intuitive frameworks that are useful to support your...
How to implement a Blue Ocean Strategy
When competition in a market is fierce, it can be difficult to differentiate your company. When this happens, companies often consider tweaking their products and/or establishing new markets in an attempt to create new demand and open up opportunities. This strategy...
Using Porter’s Five Forces in strategy development
When surveying an industry, it can be difficult to understand where to start, and what to focus on. The Porter’s Five Forces framework is a useful macro framework that can be used to develop corporate strategy within an industry. This framework helps companies...
Word clouds: The great debate
Doing a quick Google search on the topic of word clouds results in some very negative blog posts such as “Word Clouds are Lame,” “Why Word Clouds Harm Insights,” and “The Problem with Word Clouds.” This negativity is absolutely warranted – word clouds are very limited...
PESTEL Analysis for strategic planning
How should we plan for the future? In which country should we invest? Which country poses the highest risk to our business? These are only some of the questions that a PESTEL analysis framework can answer. Related closely to a PEST analysis or a STEEP analysis, the...
Deploying a Counter-CI strategy
Competitive Intelligence (CI) is a company’s tool to gain insight into a competitor’s strategy, product, priorities, strengths, and weaknesses. However, CI can also be used by competitors on your own company to allow them to compete more effectively. Defending against...
A day in the life of a Consultant at HelloInfo
When I am asked what I do for a living, and I reply with “Consultant,” my response is typically met with a friendly, sometimes puzzled nod which is often accompanied by a variety of follow-up questions that require me to provide further insight. To the non-business...
Using Strategic Quadrants for qualitative data visualization
Which opportunity should we prioritize? Which threat poses the greatest risk? What path should we pursue to provide the highest impact? These are the types of questions that are often answered by a Strategic Quadrant. Also commonly known as a “Competitive Matrix,” an...
Stay on top of market developments with Analytical Newsletters
While much of what we do at HelloInfo is focused on supporting clients’ questions to help inform strategic decisions at a point in time, there are also ways we can support teams to keep apprised of ongoing competitor and market developments. HelloInfo's Analytical...
Using radar charts effectively
Have you ever been asked to compare multiple competitors, across multiple criteria? Perhaps you have needed to compare multiple products across varying functionalities. Radar charts, otherwise known as spider charts, can be useful tools for visualizing this type of...
Say Hello to Irida!
HelloInfo is proud and excited to announce that we have a new team member joining us. With 8+ years of extensive experience in market intelligence and strategy, Irida Koco is joining HelloInfo as a Senior Consultant. She has worked primarily with B2B customers,...
What is a bubble chart and how do I use one?
When asked to list examples of traditional charts and graphs, most people will name bar, line or pie charts. Rarely do people list radar charts, histograms, or bubble charts, but these types of charts can be exceptionally useful when needing to visualize data with...
The love / hate relationship with pie charts
Introduced in 1801 by Scottish engineer, William Playfair, pie charts are a very common, but controversial way to visualize data. While pie charts are often depicted as simple and easy to create statistical tools the pie chart has become a divisive tool that many...
War Gaming as a tool to predict competitor actions
In a competitive marketplace, knowing your competition’s next move can give your organization an advantage. War gaming is an effective means to establish how your competitors will react to changes in the market. When conducted properly war gaming can deliver insights...
Using customer journey maps for qualitative data visualization
Have you ever wished that you could walk a mile in your customer’s shoes? Imagine how much insight you could gain if you had a step-by-step overview of a customer’s use of your product. While you might not literally be able to walk a mile in their shoes, you can do...
Using heat maps for qualitative data visualization
Many professionals, including engineers, doctors, marketers, and researchers, utilize heat maps to visualize data sets and turn them into comprehensive, actionable takeaways. As part of our series on qualitative data visualization, dive in with us as we explore this...
The benefits of diversity in business and competitive intelligence
When launching HelloInfo, founders Tanya Humphrey and Nicolle McKinnon had several key foundational values they wanted to build the business on. One of these was clear – they wanted to create an organization that brings together a myriad of voices, backgrounds, and...
How do I ensure I am conducting ethical competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the systematic collection and analysis of information on an enterprise’s marketplace from a wide variety of sources, to aid an organization in making informed choices for their future. According to Gartner, “CI business goals may be...
Using infographics for qualitative data visualization
At some point in our professional or academic lives we have all sat through a presentation where the speaker shows a PowerPoint deck with nothing but block text on every slide. By the time the speaker reaches the third slide, most of the audiences’ attention spans...