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Identify Positive or Negative Trends Within Your Industry

By Kimberly Clark on November 15, 2019

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Kimberly Clark

Kimberly oversees global sales and strategic marketing planning.

Industry Trends: Opportunities and Risks

  • Do you have a firm grasp on the direction your market segments are headed?
  • Do you know which of your markets are areas of opportunity vs. risk?

DataCast Pro™, can help you with just that.

Mentioned in a previous post, DataCast Pro gives you access to thousands of market datasets that cover both domestic and international markets. These datasets are applicable to businesses in manufacturing, distribution, construction, and almost all of the service sector.

What sets this program apart from being just a data provider?

DataCast Pro employs ITR Economics’ Rates-of-Change methodology and converts monthly historical data points into year-over-year growth rates, which allow for the quick and easy identification of trends within the markets.

From there, DataCast Pro incorporates ITR Economics’ exclusive Business Cycle Phases™. To really bring the program to life, we’ve provided our top Management Objectives™ for each Phase of the Business Cycle, making this a source of actionable, profit-enhancing information.

One of the interesting things about our Management Objectives: Some are counterintuitive. 

This clear roadmap of when to take certain actions for certain markets will boost your ability to maximize your ROI.

Let’s get back to the opportunities and risks. Now that you have the background on what we do with the data, we can dive into how it gives you a 360-degree view of your market landscape.

Looking at your markets’ annual growth rates shows you which Phase each particular market is in. Let’s say you operate in the food and beverage sector within the US.

DataCast Pro will show you that US Food Production has been in Phase C, Slowing Growth, since June of 2019 and is expected to continue slowing, heading toward a business cycle low in the first quarter of 2020. 

Next, let’s look at Beverage Production. DataCast Pro shows you that US Beverage Production has been in Phase D, Recession, since the first quarter of this year. 

How could knowing these two data points help in your planning?

Well, seeing Beverage in such a state of contraction obviously tells you that it is unlikely to provide significant growth opportunities in the near term. What levers do you have at your disposal to capitalize on this trend? 

  • Is it possible to acquire a competitor that operates exclusively in this space and must be feeling the negative pressure by now?
  • Is it possible to reallocate resources to take advantage of the coming accelerating growth trend in the food side of your business?
  • Does your budget need adjusting?
  • Does your marketing plan need rebalancing?

You know your business and the types of levers at your disposal best. DataCast Pro provides the insights into your industry trends to help you increase your tactical prowess over that of your competitors.

To help get you started with the DataCast Pro program, an ITR economist will help you find the right leading indicators for your business and conduct a timing analysis for a qualitative 1218-month outlook for one dataset. You will also have access to one hour of support per month with one of our economists.

DataCast Pro's value doesn’t stop there. It can also help increase the accuracy of your internal sales forecasting and allow you to see which segments of your business are outperforming others.

 

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