Abstract:

Knowledge is an important corporate asset and yet the development of a knowledge based infrastructure is a relatively new business practice. This paper argues that such an important new development should be business-led rather than IT-led yet there is an IT-led trend towards integrating information in data warehouses which could become management’s main source of business intelligence. Marketing research information tends to be ad-hoc in nature and is therefore unlikely to be incorporated in this strategy. Unless this information is integrated within the infrastructure market research is in danger of being marginalised and even replaced. Furthermore this paper argues that data warehousing is not the only method of providing an integrated view of corporate information and indeed it may not be the most appropriate approach for volatile marketing information. Recent advances in technology especially those associated with ‘thin-clients’ and the access of data over the Intranet enable disparate data sources to be integrated to provide the user with a complete business view of relevant information.