Colas, market intelligence to keep one step ahead

Unsurprisingly R&D took us down this route. We need to pay particular attention to what is happening around the world, particularly in France, as things move very quickly. We carry out more than half of our turnover abroad. We needed to broaden our horizons in order to meet the needs of our different territories located around the world. Going on the principal that we can’t possibly know everything, we needed to detect all the best ideas no matter where they came from. This was even more the case since Colas has broadened the range of services offered to adapt to new mobility needs. Our latest innovations prove this. Flowell, our dynamic road making solution, is the perfect example. We are fully aware that we are moving away from our previous core products and services, that is to say asphalt and concrete. Therefore, it is important to better understand the new sectors towards which we are developing, in order to acquire the necessary competencies and identify the key actors, competitors etc. With these different needs being rather widespread, we realized that we needed a link with all this data. Our research was mostly limited to Google.

Bit by bit we are moving away from our core trade which mostly involved making asphalt mixes and concrete

The goal is to reposition certain strategic orientations or specific points according to the particular field. This means identifying innovations that might be of interest to us as those that are not yet in the radar of the group. The aim is to be one step ahead. Our actions have become more and more complicated in particularly specialised fields, market intelligence can also help us to identify potential partners in fields outside of our core business.  For the solar road, for example, which was outside of our core expertise, we worked closely with the CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission ) who has specific expertise in this field. Personally, I began as a client who received this market intelligence.  At the CST, we manage a large number of projects and research different products. In my role I am required to qualify the ecosystem of projets which are about to be completed in order to have a clear vision of what is happening all around. This goes beyond the purely technical aspect managed by the project manager. Today this market intelligence completes the bibliographies which are available at the start of a new project and allows us to think out of the box without sticking to our own ideas and thoughts. Monitoring technological aspects as part of this intelligence is fundamental for a project manager. Following the release of new patents, competitors etc. I would also add that it prevents us from potentially exploring an idea which has already been used, or used more quickly by a competitor.  For a project manager there is nothing worse than discovering a critical piece of information too late which totally challenges the project. This is something that I experienced when I was in this role myself.

As I explained, we already carried out market intelligence, but in a disorganized and unstructured way. A few years ago, we started to make this market intelligence ‘reliable’. That meant identifying the different needs in order to make more specific research. It became quickly obvious that we needed a tool for this. We decided to go with Sindup, which helped us quickly to organize key topics, manage information feedback and incorporate very different needs. Once the expert curators and analysts had been trained each person was then independent to explore their subject. The diversity of our different activities is one of the particularities of the group. Someone who works with concrete doesn’t have the same needs as a colleague who works with asphalt. We also have subsidiaries who are specialised in rail, or even pipe systems. We can tell the need is great and each person works on very specific data. The tool helps analysts to review all these topics in a way which is adapted for each analyst.

Sindup has helped us to organise key topics, manage information feedback and incorporate very different needs.

Amongst other benefits the platform helps us to access university research centres and to recuperate theses which are vital to our research. This broadens potential sources. For example, we have teams working on urban heat islands and our market intelligence helped identify tenders with projects in certain cities, allowing us to bid for these projects. Further to the commitments in the Paris 2015 Agreements, companies are defining their Bas Carbone (carbon reduction) strategies to improve their carbon footprint. Within this context, different teams on the campus have also implemented market intelligence topics on the theme of Bas Carbone. Each team applies this to their own field.

At the beginning there were four or five people. We presented the tool to the group and then one thing lead to another, through word of mouth, particularly through actions which we put in place to make the service better known, we are now looking at fifty expert curators. For the last two years, one person has been totally dedicated to this activity in our business area. It is an investment. We believed in it and ther results are there, but we believe in it without a doubt!