The importance of market intelligence
The whole thrust of this argument is to direct our attention towards the process of
obtaining information about what is going on in the shipping market and
understanding the implications of any actions we take. Research suggests that
successful business decisions are based upon careful consideration of all the relevant
facts, while bad decisions often flow from inadequate consideration of the facts.
For example, Kepner and Tregoe, in their study of business decisions, made the
following comments:
In the course of our work, we witnessed a number of decisions in government
agencies and private industry that ranged in quality from questionable to
catastrophic. Wondering how such poor decisions ever came to be made, we
decided to look into their history. We found that most of these decisions were
bad because certain important pieces of available information had been ignored,
discounted or given insufficient attention. We concluded that the process of
gathering and organising information for decision making needed improvement.47
These observations, which can hardly be at variance with most people’s practical
experience, emphasize the importance of collecting and interpreting information.