Part
01
of three
Part
01
IT Purchase Decisions: Macro Business Trends
Business owners/leaders look for information to stay informed about macro business trends in public library databases, and published reports from government agencies and their partners. Further details, including relevant statistics, can be found below.
Public Library Databases Provide Information about Industry Trends and More
- Business owners in Canada look for information to stay informed about macro business trends in databases available in public libraries such as the Business Source Ultimate that is made available by the Vancouver Public Library.
- Business Source Ultimate is used to get information about macro industry trends, successful companies, competitors, and even government/regulatory controls affecting various industries.
- Canadian business owners gain access to “3500+ magazines, industry profiles, market research and country reports”, and over 67,000 videos using this database. Its full-text journals are from 70 countries.
- Daily updates are made to the Business Source Ultimate database. As of September 2019, it had 1,375 unique titles, “S&P Fortune 500 content with no embargo”, and a Company View feature that provides information for over 1.1 million companies.
- The database also provides more than 100 publications for regional business news (i.e. U.S. and Canada).
- Two other databases that business owners access in public libraries are ThomasNet and Harris InfoSource All-Industries and Manufacturing Directories.
- Business in Vancouver (BIV) is another database for macro industry trends at the Vancouver Public Library and can be accessed in print form there.
- Readers of BIV are mainly (90%) buying decision-makers, business owners or managers (89%), “have investment portfolios valued at [$200,000]”, and have an average age of 47 years.
Government Agencies Conduct Market Research that Provides Invaluable Information in Published Reports
- Business owners leverage several government resources for industry sector data including business trends and statistics from multiple services including industry sector intelligence, small business research and statistics, and consumer trends reports.
- Contributors to these government resources include Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and Statistics Canada.
- Statistics Canada provides a wide variety of information about the country’s economy to help citizens and decision-makers.
- Statistics Canada recently joined forces with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in April 2020, to provide insights into the “impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic” to help the government and businesses to move forward from the pandemic. Together, they have formed Canada’s “largest [crowd sourced] business intelligence survey”, called the Canadian Survey of Business Conditions (CSBC).
- The aim is to provide credible and reliable data to business leaders and policymakers, from information, gathered from any of the 200,000 businesses in the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s network.
- More than 100 “leading business and industry associations” in Canada will also be involved, and this includes “the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters”.
- In May 2020, Statistics Canada could provide details about macro business trends for small businesses from the CSBC survey.
- By July 2020, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce had information to share with business owners in its Canadian Business Resilience Network, which showed that 70% of businesses’ revenue being affected by COVID-19 in April 2020.
- 35% of businesses saw a decline in revenue by 50% or more in April 2020 compared with April 2019.
- 13,000 businesses took part in the survey and “80.9% have experienced a medium to high drop in demand for services or products”.