2014 was a relatively quiet year for gap intelligence. We didn’t make any drastic changes or reinvent ourselves. We didn’t launch a volley of new services and tools. We just stayed the course this year.
What we did do in 2014 was focus on the things that we do best. We focused on our data and how to collect data with nine-nines (99.9999999%) of accuracy, in faster and more efficient ways. An even larger initiative was the fulfillment of our “Analyst Vision” that will guide our illustrious team of analysts through the years to come. Backed by our very deep understanding of the marketplace, we believe that gap intelligence’s analysts will create higher market level reporting never before offered – market sizing, forecasting, and business intelligence consulting. Our goal is to perfect the science of capturing vital data quickly and accurately and use that data to create powerful insights unique to gap intelligence and valuable to our clients.
2014 was a year of reflection, 2015 is the year of “go”.
We’re hitting the “Go” button on a host of new innovations and services in 2015. While official launch dates are not specified, here are just a few new initiatives that will launch this year:
Smartphones Market Intelligence Service
You might have heard that these new “Smartphones” have disrupted just about everything. Navigation systems, recorders, digital cameras, audio players, video cameras, tablets, and PCs have all been hit hard by the immense popularity and growth of smartphones. gap intelligence is excited to launch our Market Intelligence Service covering the smartphone industry. Like all of our market intelligence services, smartphone manufacturers, and resellers will be provided the industry’s most timely and accurate business intelligence information on their marketplace.
gapCompare
gapCompare is a derivative and “lite” version of our industry leading gapTCO calculator. gapCompare is an easy-to-use web application that allows anyone (I’m looking at you copier dealers, manufacturers, VARs, and ecommerce sites ) to create custom head-to-head product comparisons of printers and copiers. Users can easily pick products to compare and create customized proposals to give to customers and close deals.
Quixel Forecasting
Last year, we purchased Quixel Research, a leading provider of market sizing and forecasting for the home entertainment industry. Since our acquisition of the company last August, we have gotten ourselves familiar with Quixel’s services and now intend to “gapify” them. Throughout 2015, we will incorporate gap intelligence’s granular market data to Quixel’s market sizing and forecasting reports and services. With our market data, clients will see new and more compelling cuts of the industry that provide greater insight and a higher level of understanding (we’re giving the reports themselves a facelift too).
We also hope to introduce our Quixel Forecasting
services to the other categories that we track including (but not limited to) printing and imaging, home appliances, and computing.
gAPI
After years of planning, speculating, tripping, falling, and crying, we are ready to introduce an external API of our industry leading market data. All of our data, every morsel of it, will be available through our API, which will dramatically change how we distribute our information and how our customers consume it. We’ll be able to create reports, tables, and charts through dynamic online applications. Our clients will be able to power their marketing, sales, and internal operations tools directly with our data. gAPI opens the doors to countless opportunities for gap intelligence including data licensing, data warehousing, and big data analytics.
Data Mapping
After over twelve years of practice, gap intelligence has gotten really good at tying disparate data sets together. This is a particularly handy skill if you would like to link product information.
Let’s talk about the iPhone.
For you and me, the iPhone is a pretty simple name. However, for Apple tracking the iPhone across multiple resellers and data sources is extremely challenging, because everyone uses their own nomenclature to label the product. I-Phone, I_phone, eye phone – all kinds of iPhones! Most resellers call the iPhone an internal SKU number (ABC123) and to make things even more complicated, the iPhone comes in multiple colors that are often mislabeled. The blue iPhone is called gray, rust is called orange, magenta is pink and so on. Want to learn where the iPhone is sold, advertised, and listed? Good luck!
gap intelligence has perfected our data linking processes and combined with our knowledge of the marketplace we can bring clarity to massive data sets. gap intelligence is in the unique position to assist companies of all sorts in making sense of their data and help them find answers to very big questions.
Those are just a handful of new initiatives that you’ll see from gap intelligence in 2015. While we are excited about what you’ll see this year, our technology and team of gappers have some amazing things coming this year and beyond. We are headed for a very fun trip.
Let’s go.
