Monitoring: do you consider it essential or superfluous? Supporters of both sides will put forward compelling arguments to answer this question. Between these two opposing viewpoints lie legitimate questions, doubts, and a few misconceptions. Here are seven widely held misconceptions, their basis, and our modest contribution to the debate.
1. “Monitoring is time-consuming.”
Admittedly, setting up a monitoring system requires an investment of time [1]. However, time management is a challenge for you, as it is for all professionals, managers, and entrepreneurs. Yet the time required to find essential information for the company in an emergency and without a pre-established strategy will prove to be significant, even if it remains difficult to quantify. In addition, the adrenaline and the stopwatch will have to be reactivated every time a new information need arises, which will be a pure expense.
On the other hand, planning and carrying out information monitoring on a specific subject allow you to stay up to date in your field of activity and even anticipate trends. In doing so, monitoring will support your informed decision-making, allowing you to manage your time for value-added tasks. It is therefore an investment.
If you don't know how to set up this monitoring within your team or don't have the time, information professionals can assist you in this process. This is a service we offer at Cogniges. You will save time by accessing relevant and directly usable information, whether operational, tactical, or strategic in nature.
2. “Monitoring is expensive.”
The potential cost of monitoring can be daunting, but the cost of not having strategic information can be truly damaging to an organization. In these circumstances, two elements are inseparable: properly managing the monitoring project to better understand its costs.
What does “managing the monitoring project” mean? It means familiarizing yourself with the five-step process and starting by allowing the necessary time for planning. Knowing your information needs precisely, stating them clearly, defining the areas of monitoring, and aligning the process with the organizational strategy are winning conditions for avoiding dispersion and aiming for efficiency throughout the project.
Under these conditions, monitoring will contribute to your organization's agility and provide a good return on investment. Indeed, an agile organization observes its environment, recognizes, processes, and analyzes relevant information for decision-making that translates into action [2]. This is precisely what monitoring offers.
3. “Monitoring or business intelligence is good for large organizations.”
In a survey published in 2019, Statistics Canada reported that business intelligence technologies were more likely to be adopted by large companies (37%) than by medium-sized companies (29%) or small companies (21%) [3]. However, in a master's thesis in management science presented in 2020, the author argued, with numerous studies to support his case, that “business intelligence improves a company's productivity and knowledge in the short and long term, whether it operates in urban or rural areas, regardless of the industry” [4].
It is important to remember that there are different types of monitoring: strategic, informational, scientific, competitive, sectoral, regulatory, social media, and digital reputation. One of these types is sure to meet your informational needs and organizational expectations.
4. " Monitoring is complicated!"
Like any new way of doing things in an organization, monitoring can seem complex. It can indeed be complex if you leave things to chance, if you are overwhelmed by irrelevant information (noise), if you don't know how to filter it, and if you find yourself unable to disseminate relevant information.
While there is no universal recipe, there are best practices for successfully completing each step: here is an overview. For example, the remedy for improvisation is planning, the solution to avoiding noise is choosing the right sources of information and channeling their output, establishing rigorous criteria is one way to filter information, and paying attention to the content and form of monitoring deliverables will allow them to be used to their full potential [5].
Another potential complexity lies in thinking that monitoring is a linear process. In reality, it must be iterative or it will quickly become ineffective: it is a cycle that guarantees continuous improvement.
5. “Monitoring is easy, everything can be found on the web.”
This belief, although contrary to the previous one, is widely shared. Some people may think that using a tool such as Google Alerts is sufficient for monitoring. However, this tool only covers a tiny part of the web and excludes, for example, paid databases, social networks, and less indexed sources, such as organizations that produce gray literature.
Monitoring relies on a variety of rigorously selected, tested, and evaluated sources: it is often a balanced combination of free and paid sources [6]. Let's not forget that, while some information is freely available, a whole section is only accessible through a search in paid sources. Settling for free sources is a bit like staying in the museum lobby; combining free and paid sources gives you the chance to discover an artist's work and learn how to interpret it.
6. “Anyway, we won't have time to read everything!”
Of course! In fact, no one could, even in a specialized field. Information overload is a widespread scourge that can wreak havoc.
But monitoring does not claim to be exhaustive. It aims to provide you with information that is not only relevant, but also reliable, valid, accurate, up-to-date, and hand-picked. In addition, it will rarely be raw information: the deliverable will highlight a continuous stream of quality content, synthesized or analyzed, well structured and readable, geared toward decision-making to facilitate action [5].
7. “Monitoring is espionage.”
That's what one might think when talking about “economic intelligence.” There are three types of information: 1) white, which is easily and legally accessible information, such as a scientific article; 2) gray, which is legally accessible information, but sometimes difficult to find or locate, such as research reports or conference proceedings; 3) black, which is information with restricted distribution and whose access or use is explicitly protected, such as internal and confidential reports.
Even if it is competitive, monitoring remains a legal process that allows white or gray information to be identified, but not black information. In addition, this type of monitoring will also cover regulatory and technological aspects, as well as weak signals. A “weak signal” is defined as “an imprecise clue, very vague information about high-impact events likely to occur in the future, which develops and improves gradually over time” [7].
Conclusion
In a world like yours, which is constantly evolving, monitoring is a powerful strategic tool that is accessible to all organizations, provided it is organized properly. Whether you want to train yourself in this area or entrust the task to information professionals, don't hesitate to call on Cogniges' services: your decisions deserve to be based on reliable, selective, and timely information.
References
[1] Institut des hautes études de l’éducation et de la formation (France). (2024). Comprendre la veille informationnelle.
[2] Goria, S. (2020). L’entreprise sous le prisme des combinaisons des méthodes d’agilité, de créativité et de veille. Marché et organisations, n° 39(3), 17-38.
[3] Statistique Canada. (2019). Enquête sur l’innovation et les stratégies d’entreprise. Le Quotidien.
[4] St-Sauveur, P. (2020). Évaluation des pratiques d’intelligence et de veille stratégiques dans les PME québécoises [Mémoire de maîtrise en sciences de la gestion]. Université du Québec à Montréal.
[5] Mesguich, V. (2022). Réussir l’édition de ses livrables de veille. Techniques de l’ingénieur (1041).
[6] Deschamps, C. (2018). Outils gratuits et payants : le mix gagnant d’un système de veille. Archimag, Guide pratique « Veille : les nouveaux fondamentaux » (63), 55-57.
[7] Lesca, N., Caron-Fasan, M.-L., et Falcy, S. (2009). Comment les managers interprètent les informations à caractère anticipatif. CERAG.