Marketing is everywhere. Marketing is the key for the companies to check the daily happenings and work on those. By this only they can work on the information that is gathered from different sources. The tool to analyze the market situations and to take correct steps on those is marketing. Hence there is good number of ways that the companies work on. Here comes the question of what is marketing intelligence system? To define it clearly "Marketing Intelligence system is the set of procedures and sources that managers use to develop the marketing environment". In lay man terms it is used as a tool to collect the daily information of market and by analyzing this they can develop the results of the company.

The sources for the information can be anything. The internal records gives the information about the results but MIS gives us the daily happenings in the market. Hence Managers do work on different sources to collect the information. The sources can be from Journals, Books, suppliers and channel partners etc. To collect the information they use different ways and those can be

1. From Sales Team: The front end of the companies who stay long time on field and collect great information about the market, product, price and on different parameters. The company can collect great information about the market from the sales team. They can easily prepare formats of reports on different parameters and can collect the information. They keep in touch with the distributors, channel partners, customers so on. Hence they can collect the information well. They can take the suggestions, comments of the customers and can send it to the concerned person for development.

2. From Marketing Intermediaries: By keeping a healthier relationship with the Intermediaries like channel partners, distributors, dealers, stockiest, Retailers and so on they can collect good information about the daily happenings. As these people stay in the market and do the daily activities of good number of companies. Including your company and Competitiors Company's product they sell in the market. Hence it will be useful to the managers if they stay in touch with these people.

3. From Third party: By appointing or in tie up with third party consulting teams may also help the organization to collect the information. The marketing research firms can provide hands on information about the required parameters of market. They can act to give us good information based on the customer's feedback and comments.

4. From Competitors: By purchasing competitors products, and working on their strategies, published reports, advertisements, employees and dealers etc can help the managers to gather the information. And based upon this information they can analyze the market and work on the areas where they can beat the competitors as to tap the market.

5. From Government Resources: From government published reports, surveys, journals and books also they can collect hands on information. This can be utilized in a proper manner as the data collected and published are on the exact parameters with true and hard work. Hence these data can be trusted and managers can collect the information from those.

6. From Customers: The managers can collect the information from the customers.
They can collect it as feedback, comments and suggestions. These can be done online or at customers place. Hence it depends upon the company's line of business. Hence different managers work on different parameters to collect the information.

For Ex: The garment or cloth stores do appoint some people to act as a customer in their stores so as to find out the customer experience in the show room. The companies like who work on the holidays and tourism packages also collect the information from different sources to check the market environment. Not only these companies but also from all the companies perform some work to collect the information and work on that for the future growth. Hence Marketing Intelligence system helps the company to perform well in the coming and present quarters by analyzing the collected data from different sources.

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Reference: Philip Kotler