Some Data May be Cheap, but Could Prove Expensive: the Untold Stories
Companies are confronted on a daily, even hourly, basis with the need for data about their own businesses and intelligence about their competitors. Easily available, secondary data may be adequate for the purpose provided that they are reliable. Unfortunately, that is the essence of the problem: is secondary data reliable?
Complex Strategies Based on Questionable Data
All too often companies spend an inordinate amount of time and effort constructing complex strategies based on questionable, unvalidated data. Companies prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on an acquisition appear ready (or resigned) to pay for good legal, tax, and environmental advice, but may base the commercial analysis on casual data found on various unsubstantiated websites.