Communications teams often rely on external media to get their points across internally – but what’s the best way to gather and distribute that information? We teamed up with Moreover Technologies to investigate.

We work in a hyper-connected world. Over the past fifteen years, media consumption habits in business have changed dramatically, and permanently. People are now taking in media from more sources than ever before, from more locations – and there’s an awful lot more to take in.

So what are businesses supposed to do about this data overload? It’s still vital that companies and their people are kept up to date on the issues that relate to their everyday activities and long-term strategy. But simply relying on employees to inform themselves won’t cut it.

A 2011 study from the Sloan School of Management, MIT, entitled ‘Strength in Numbers: How Does Data-Driven Decision Making Affect Firm Performance?’, examined the effect that data and business analytics had on a company. It concluded that firms that encouraged decisions to be made on the back of data and business analytics would see productivity increase by 5-6% in comparison with businesses that stuck with experience- and intuition-based decision making.

It’s clear, then, that making sure your employees have access to the right media is crucial.

The question then becomes: how do you get the right media intelligence to the right people in your company? Brian Mackie, senior product manager at Moreover Technologies, recalls the old model of media distribution in businesses: “You used to have someone who was a ‘corporate librarian’, who would distribute information in this very restricted way. But now everyone needs access to external media.”

On realising this, the default response of many businesses is to turn to a free provider, such as Google News and Google Alerts, which do offer some customisation options. But Mackie believes that commercial search engines will ultimately fail to serve business needs. “They’re consumer-focused, and they don’t target the results they provide, so you end up with far too much noise. They’re not tailored to businesses – it’s a case of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.”

Another issue with allowing external services to control the news your company receives is that it cuts your comms team out of the process. “We found,” says Mackie, “that the corporate communications teams of firms, particularly those focused on internal engagement, want to be able to help employees do their jobs better by giving them the right information. And in a consumer news service, those teams can’t add in company-specific information or the right corporate perspective.”

Asking employees to manage their own news-gathering adds a burden to daily tasks that can end up derailing productivity and effectiveness. So, how can you solve this problem? Media intelligence solutions, such as those offered by Moreover Technologies, are the way forward.

It might sound like jargon, but media intelligence is actually a straightforward concept. It helps businesses to turn the media surrounding their company and their industry into a “powerful strategic asset”, says Mackie, and supports informed decision-making by providing relevant information to employees. It’s a delivery system for the information that will give your company a competitive edge.

So what are the characteristics to look for in a media intelligence solution? Mackie believes that Moreover’s products are differentiated by the fact the company-wide news distribution is offered on top of its monitoring services, which many of the other players in the market aren’t able to provide.

Social is also a key part of the solution. “We’re very open to changing definitions of news,” says Mackie. “However, sometimes social media becomes the news, because it’s reported on so much, so it blurs the feedback loop between media and consumers. We think that a key strength of providing employees with one consolidated product, one search engine, one interface, is that it keeps that loop nice and clear.”

The right media intelligence solution should offer coverage that can keep up with the pace at which your organisation consumes media. Stories from sources which are important to your business or in your industry should be available within minutes to all users of the solution. Mackie points out that speedy updates are key for giving a business early warning of any approaching crises and enabling them to deal with problems in a timely manner.

Other points to look out for include highly curatable search filters, so that comms teams can control the type of information being circulated around different departments; editorial control – particularly if media might be distributed outside a company; and the option to deliver business news through multiple channels. This last point is crucial because a media intelligence solution should mimic the fact that everyone now gets news from multiple sources during the working day – whether it’s on Google+, RSS feeds, email, Twitter...the list goes on. A media intelligence service should integrate seamlessly within the work-flow of each company, so that it can be incorporated into email alerts, newsletters, or a company intranet.

It’s also important that your media intelligence solution has the capacity to display images and infographics, and that it has a well-designed, easy to use interface, making it as easy as possible for employees to find the information they need.

“‘Media intelligence’, to us, is a way for companies to take external media and turn it into competitive advantage,” says Mackie. “It often gets mixed up as a term, and sounds like jargon, so it doesn’t mean enough. Much like the term ‘business intelligence’, it has so many different connotations. We want to make it our own and define it on our terms.”

Moreover is in the process of doing just that - making media intelligence its own. Its solutions allow companies to create that edge over their competitors by effectively communicating, analysing, informing and sharing business decisions within a company. A service that can provide information for all employees on the events that matter in the day-to-day industry landscape will extend the effectiveness of those employees, increase productivity, and consolidate costs. Solutions such as those offered by Moreover Technologies turn mass media into media intelligence – can your business afford to ignore that opportunity?