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Report on

“Cost Benefit Analysis and Account Planning for CtrlS Datacenters Ltd”

Submitted to the

MANAGEMENT

In partial fulfillment of the

POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT

Under the guidance of

Dr. N.C.Rajyalakshmi

By

T.Rajkumar

Roll No – T21088

SIVA SIVANI INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

NH-7, KOMPALLY,

HYDERABAD



Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

Declaration Certificate

S. No ContentPage

No.

1

2Chapter-1

INTRODUCTION

3Chapter-2

PROFILE

4Chapter-3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

5Chapter-4

DATA ANALYSIS

6Chapter-5

INTERPRETATION AND FINDINGS

7Chapter-6

RECOMMENDATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

8 CONCLUSION

9 BIBLIOGRAPHY



ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I sincerely feel the credit of the project work could not be narrowed to only one individual. This

work is an integrated effort of all those concerned with it, it would have been quite difficult

without their direct & indirect co-operation. I wish to express my appreciation and gratitude to

all the concerned people.

It is my privilege to thank Mr.M.Sai Venkat Ram (Assistant Manager Channel Sales) whose

guidance has made me learn and understand the finer and complicated aspects of business

account planning and business model. The help and guidance which he has extended to me has

made me feel as being an integral part of the organization.

First and the foremost my intellectual debt is to Dr.N.C.Rajyalakshmi who has contributed

significantly towards the completion of the project.

I am thankful to all the people who have given their precious time and provided me with

requisite data without which this project would not have completed .I also thank them for giving

their valuable suggestions during the entire period of my project work.

However, I accept the sole responsibility for any errors of omission and commission.

T.RajKumar



DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project entitled “Cost Benefit Analysis and Account Planning for

CtrlS Datacenters Limited” submitted for the award of PGDM-TPS(Finance) is my original

work and the project has not formed the basis for the award of any degree, diploma, associate

ship, fellowship or similar other titles. It has not been submitted to any other university or

institution for the award of any degree or diploma.

DATE:

PLACE:

T.RajKumar



Chapter 1

1. Introduction

Scope of the study and significance of the study objectives:

The purpose of this business plan is to assist CtrlS Datacenters Ltd in making decisions regarding

the investment in their client companies by means of Debt, Equity and Debt&Equity.This plan

focuses on the financial impacts of management decisions. Information from this project will be

used by the CtrlS Datacenters Ltd about the financial impacts when invested on different clients.

This Business Model is prepared with the notion of providing the top management, the investment

decision making process for a long term period. This Business Model would consist of various

aspects that are necessary for the valuation of the client companies. Some of the aspects that have

been used include: the investment on the clients and the cash inflows to the company. The

business model primary focus would be to evaluate the revenue generation from the companies

for a long term period.

A big boom has been witnessed in Datacenter Industry in recent times. A large number of new

players have entered the market and are vying to gain market share in this rapidly improving

market. The study goes on to evaluate and analyze the findings so as to present a clear picture of

trends in the Datacenter Industry.

1.1 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The following are some of the objectives of the study:

To evaluate the clients of CtrlS Datacenters Ltd for taking financing decisions on whom to

invest. Development of an excel template for assessment of the clients companies i.e., which

clients are more profitable to the company.

To suggest the company, the suitable clients.

To understand the process of converting leads into customers by knowing their

preferences and their budget.



To understand the pricing preferences of customers for different cloud services.

To analyze the key challenges that organization faces so as to present a clear picture of

trends in the datacenter industry.

1.2 NEED AND IMPORTANCE

The business model prepared would meet the various requirements of the company

such as:

To evaluate the performance of the client companies

To give information about the progress of the clients on a year on year basis.

To assist the companies as to whether the company should withdraw the funds or should

it further reinvest the funds to improve the revenue.

To assist the organization in taking the right decisions with regard to the long term clients

in investments.

1.3 INTRODUCTION TO THE BUSINESS MODEL:

The business model of a company is a simplified presentation of the business logic. Business

model plays a significant role in today‟s corporate world. The approaches used by the big private

and public companies include financial analysis. A business model would describe various

aspects such as what a company offers to its customers and how it earns money.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS MODEL:

Companies are now operating in industries that are characterized by multiple and co-existing

business models. Competitive advantage is achieved through focused and innovative business

models. When you analyze the airline, music, telecom or banking and datacenter industry you

can see that in each one there are different business models competing against each other

. For example, in the airline industry you have the traditional flag carriers, the low-cost

airlines, the business class only airlines and the fractional private jet ownership companies. Each

business model emphasizes different characteristics and competes on different aspects.

Based on this evolution in the competitive landscape the management and mastery of business



models, as well as business model innovation are rapidly moving to the center of attention in

boardroom discussions. The IBM Global CEO Study 2006, which reports on the agenda of CEOs

in the next few years underlines this. It highlights that CEOs believe that business model advance

is becoming the new strategic differentiator and that business model advance can pay off.

Chapter 2

INDUSTRY PROFILE

Information technology industry has become one of the fastest growing industries in India.

Strong demand over the past few years has placed India amongst the fastest growing IT markets

in the Asia- Pacific region.

The Indian telecommunications industry is one of the fastest growing in the world. The industry

has witnessed consistent growth during the last year on the back of rollout of newer circles by

operators, successful auction of third-generation and broadband wireless access spectrum,

network rollout in semi-rural areas and increased focus on the value added services market.Drastically changes have already happened to Bandwidth pricing for leased lines and now our

datacenters are backed up with 3Gbps lines enables India to compete with any countries in the

world.

India's record on information security ranks better than most locations. The authorities in India

are maintaining a keen emphasis on further strengthening the information security environment

in the country. Specific initiatives underway include enhancing the legal framework through

proposed amendments to the IT Act 2000, increasing interaction between industry players and

enforcement agencies to help create greater awareness about information security issues and

facilitate mutual support.

Indian software companies have a unique distinction of providing efficient software

solutions with cost and quality as an advantage by using state of- the-art technology. Through



joint efforts of Government and the Industry, software development and IT enabled services have

emerged as niche opportunities for India in the global context. Information Technology Act

dealing with Cyber Security, Cyber Crime and other information security related legal aspects is

in place. Through a policy of sustained R&D in cutting edge technology, we hope to further

increase and broad base exports while also expanding the domestic market.

The Government has been making continuous efforts to make India a front-runner in the age of

Information revolution. India today has the advantages of skilled manpower base, active and

healthy competition amongst states in attracting investment in infrastructure as well as framing

IT applications in areas such as e-governance, e-learning, e-commerce, entrepreneurship,

software exports growth and a large potential in the domestic market.

India has the potential to develop and manufacture electronics/IT hardware for the global

markets and gain higher global share besides meeting the country‟s future requirement in the

converging areas of information, communication and entertainment. As a result of technological

convergence at the infrastructure, services and industry level; there has been a tremendous up-

surge in new products and also consolidation in the underlying industries through acquisitions

and mergers. Consequent shift has been from monopoly of Government as service provider to

private entry in telecom to promote competition and establishing a neutral regulatory agency.

The essence of the convergence spirit and the vitality of changes have led to lowering of tariffs,

plentiful availability of bandwidth at increasingly lower cost, competition and growth in

technology.

India‟s core proposition of talent, quality, security and cost advantage would be

inconsequential without the rapid growth in availability of high quality telecommunication

connectivity across the country.

Over a span of little over a decade, the Indian telecom market has evolved from a public

sector monopoly to thriving free-market competition. Carefully crafted policy has helped drive a

balanced agenda for the sector by influencing a decline in pricing and increased affordability on

one hand and increasing access penetration and usage on the other, resulting in strong growth.

The IT-BPO sector has been a key beneficiary, with the cost of international connectivity

declining rapidly and service level quality improving significantly. India is emerging as the



fastest growing datacenter service market in Asia Pacific region. Providers are gearing up to

address a strong demand for co-location and hosting services as well as preparing their as-a-

service offerings. The Indian IT Infrastructure market reached USD 2.2 billion in 2012, growing

by about 10 percent over 2011.

Growth is being driven by ongoing datacenter consolidation and modernization,

as well as new datacenter builds outs. Indian organizations are shifting from distribute IT setup

to a more manageable and efficient centralized model leading to consolidation of branches and

remote IT resources into fewer but larger datacenters. They are also focusing on optimizing their

IT infrastructure and strategy by implementing virtualization.

Ongoing investments in large captive datacenters and the capacity growth initiated by

datacenter service providers are other drivers of growth .Among verticals , Manufacturing and

BFSI are the largest users of Datacenters. These are estimated to contribute over fifty percent of

revenue for third party datacenter service providers.

The demand for datacenters is being driven by fast growing large enterprises who want to

avail of cost benefits .Also, as more organizations adopt cloud computing, they will move their It

infrastructure out of commercial buildings to professionally managed datacenters. SME‟s will

need the expertise and application services of datacenters notably SaaS type services. Mobility,

social media and cloud computing adoption will significantly influenced demand and also on the

way datacenters are designed, operated and managed. The popularity of the managed hosting and

co-location services is also increasing because of cost savings. In a managed hosting

environment the datacenter provider will lease an entire server to a customer with add on

services like monitoring, updates, application management etc. In a co-location , model a can

place his/her own server in a datacenter and use shared resources like power and HVAC.

In Indian Datacenter Industry Telecom operators are setting up alliances with software

firms to provide datacenter services in India. BSNL for example has partnered with Dimension

Data to build, operate and manage datacenters in India. Existing datacenters are being upgraded

with the adoption of virtualization solutions.



2.1 Datacenter: A datacenter is a centralized facility for data computing, processing and

storage. A datacenter facility contains high performance servers, networking equipment, storage

arrays and provides supporting services such as powering and cooling solutions. Datacenters are

either established by large scale enterprises or by a group of enterprises for centralization of the

computing and storage processes.

With the evolution of cloud computing and cloud based services, a number of data centers are

being established to cater to the computing requirements of the end users.

2.2 History: Data centers have their roots in the huge computer rooms of the early ages of the

computing industry. Early computer systems were complex to operate and maintain, and required

a special environment in which to operate. Many cables were necessary to connect all the

components and methods to accommodate and organize these were devised, such as

standard racks to mount equipment, elevated floors, and cable trays (installed overhead or under

the elevated floor).

During the boom of the microcomputer industry, and especially during the 1980s, computers

started to be deployed everywhere, in many cases with little or no care about operating

requirements. However, as information technology (IT) operations started to grow in complexity,

companies grew aware of the need to control IT resources.

With the advent of client-server computing, during the 1990s, microcomputers (now called

"servers") started to find their places in the old computer rooms. The availability of inexpensive

networking equipment, coupled with new standards for network structured cabling, made it

possible to use a hierarchical design that put the servers in a specific room inside the company.

The use of the term "data center," as applied to specially designed computer rooms, started to

gain popular recognition about this time.

Effective data center operation requires a balanced investment in both the facility and the housed

equipment. Data center transformation takes a step-by-step approach through integrated projects

carried out over time. This differs from a traditional method of data center upgrades that takes a

serial approach. The typical projects within a data center transformation initiative include

standardization/consolidation, virtualization, automation and security.



2.3 What is tier level?

TIER 1 TIER 2 TIER 3 TIER 4

Delivery Paths Only 1 Only 11 active 1 passive 2 active

RedundancyComponents N N+1 N+1 N+N

Continuous Cooling

Load Density

Dependent

Load Density

Dependent

Load Density

Dependent Class A

Raised Floor Height 12" 18" 30-36" 30-36"

Months to implement 3 3 to 6 15 to 20 15 to 20

Year first Deployed 1965 1970 1985 1995

Annual IT

Downtime(hrs) 28.8 22 1.6 0.4

Uptime 99.671% 99.749% 99.982% 99.995%

Fault Tolerant NO NO NO YES

Representative Site

failures

6 failures over

5 years

1 failure every

year

1 failure every

2.5 years

1 failure every 5

years

Requirements Tier Level

1 Single non-redundant distribution path serving the IT equipment

Non-redundant capacity components

Basic site infrastructure with expected availability of 99.671%

2 Meets or exceeds all Tier 1 requirements

Redundant site infrastructure capacity components with expected availability of

99.741%



Table 1: Tier Levels

2.4 Market Overview: The global datacenter market is expected to post a compound annual

growth rate (CAGR) of 10.71% during the period of 2012-2016.Data center market consists of

components markets such as storage, networking, servers and powering and cooling solutions.

But rising real estate costs is resulting in high investments, which is hindering the number of

datacenters being established.

2.5 Growth Drivers in Datacenter Market

Growth drivers for the Indian Market are similar to those for global market. Among the key

growth factors is the need for enterprises to reduce IT Infrastructure costs, increase productivity

and focus on core business .Other deterrent s include highly skilled technical consultants

.Demand is also being driven by compliance to government regulations. The Indian Government

has emerged as one of the major customers for data centers. as a part of its e-governance

initiative ,the government is setting up state datacenters in all states for seamless delivery of government services.

The datacenter industry has in recent times, witnessed telecom firms getting into

datacenter space. Challenges in Datacenter Industry:

3 Meets or exceeds all Tier 1 and Tier 2 requirements

Multiple independent distribution paths serving the IT equipment

All IT equipment must be dual-powered and fully compatible with the topology

of a site's architecture

Concurrently maintainable site infrastructure with expected availability of

99.982%

4 Meets or exceeds all Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 requirements

All cooling equipment is independently dual-powered, including chillers and

heating, ventilating and air-conditioning.

Fault-tolerant site infrastructure with electrical power storage and distribution

facilities with expected availability of 99.995%



Datacenter growth in India could be impacted by factors ranging from economic, infrastructure

related to operational issues and energy management.

Economic

Natural Disasters

Economic crisis

Political Stability

Regulatory pressures

Infrastructural

High energy costs

Real estate costs

High speed reliable bandwidth

availability

Operational

Controlling costs-Labor, power etc

DC capacity planning

24*7 power supply

Efficient power management

Real estate requirements

DC Infrastructure

Exponential growth in India

Network congestion

Security

Legacy Infrastructure

2.6 Regional Overview: North America accounted for the highest share of revenue in the

global datacenter market. Other regions are also witnessing an impressive growth as many new

data center facilities are being established.

2.7 CHALLENGES IN DATACENTER INDUSTRY

PLAYERS IN INDUSTRY

CTRLS

TATA COMMUNICATIONS

RELIANCE DC



SIFY TECHNOLOGIES

NETMAGIC

ESDS

DIMENSION DATA

TULIP

GPXINDIA

2.8 Company Profile:

CtrlS Datacenters was established on 18th October 2007. CtrlS commitment to take total

ownership of the project has resulted clients featuring of the most renowned names in the

industry.

Vision: To be a leader in the datacenter industry.

Mission Enhancing protection and efficiencies of the most valuable IT assets of the knowledge

economy

.

CtrlS is India‟s leading provider of Datacenter solutions with 2 Tier -IV datacenters currently

operational in Navi Mumbai and Hyderabad. CtrlS has many firsts to its credit including India‟s

first Tier-IV datacenter, besides DR and Cloud solutions that have redefined the way IT services

are consumed by client organizations.

In a short span, CtrlS has already been recognized by leading industry bodies like

NASSCOM, CII, FICCI etc., for the pioneering work in creating IT infrastructure. CtrlS is the

only datacenter in India to have got both ISO-2000-1 & ISO 27,000-1 certifications.



2.8.1 Philosophy of Ctrl S

CtrlS commitment to its customer is total ownership where it has developed the

capabilities to provide platform level services which includes data center infrastructure,

storage, backup, hardware, OS layers, network and security layers as depicted in the

diagram.

CtrlS has developed alliances which cater to the business application layer for automating

the customer business processes, thereby developing the capability of providing end to

end custom solutions catering to their unique requirements. This initiative of CtrlS has

been in line with its corporate policy of being a steward to the IT needs of its customers.

CtrlS is promoted by the 18 year old Pioneer Group which has been building the largest

available infrastructure in the DC world, is already into FMS and SI functions. This is but

a natural process of amalgamation of Group leadership values. CtrlS assures its client that

all such custom solutions will carry the value proposition.

2.8.2 CtrlS as a Workplace: CtrlS is a young organization, but more importantly, it is an

entrepreneurial and resourceful organization, ever ready to soar higher with new ideas and new

ways of doing business. There is a consistent effort to think new and think different. The rigidity

of doing business with plug and play products is not for us. We believe that every problem

presents a potential opportunity to invent a new way of working.

Growth is rapid at CtrlS, especially for those who are self-driven and independent. CtrlS is,

perhaps, one of the few companies where the entire top management meets with clients every

week and where each new entrant to the inner circle only needs to prove his mettle; not come

armed with fancy degrees and qualifications.

In short, if you are burning to do something rather than just settle down into a nice job, CtrlS is

your kind of place.

2.8.3 About the Founder:

Mr . Sridhar is a successful serial entrepreneur of technology and IT infra business. He is

the founder, chairman and managing director of Rs.750 Crore (EV) Pioneer Group.



Under his leadership the group has been growing at more than 100% CAGR over the past

15 years.

Regarded as the thought leader in the datacenter industry, Sridhar is credited with

launching first Tier 4 datacenter in India. He has changed the DC Market landscape in

India by building a datacenter which can guarantee the highest availability and least

energy consumption. His strong belief in the philosophy of “total ownership for

consistent value addition to clients” is strongly imbibed in CtrlS as its brand core.

2.8.4 Products of CtrlS:

IT Infrastructure

Disaster Recovery Network Services

DC Infrastructure.

IT Infrastructure: : It includes dedicated hosting, managed hosting and unmanaged

hosting.

Dedicated includes the server will be provided to the customer on lease basis.

Managed hosting includes taking care of databases and backups.

Unmanaged hosting includes the hard ware components.

Disaster Recovery: It includes the backup for the data. It is important for the organizations to

maintain backup, because if any damage or fire occurs data will be lost.

DC Infrastructure: It includes the data center will be built and co-located by the company.

Built includes the company will build the data center in customer premises.

Co-location means it will store the servers and the IT Infrastructure in the company premises,

and the client can operate the services from the company by keeping their servers with our data

center.



2.8.5 Product Profile: CtrlS offers a highly secure and reliable carrier-neutral environment

to deploy IT infrastructure. Its state-of-the-art datacenters are built to Tier IV standards to give

customers almost 100% uptime for your mission-critical business applications and systems. CtrlS

datacenters help reduce your infrastructure & connectivity burdens and enables you to focus on

your core competencies. For the first time in India, CtrlS is equipped with dual active power

sources from two different power stations.

CtrlS provides various services such as DR Infra, private cloud, VPS, Dedicated Server, Storage

on demand, Colocation services, Backup Services etc. Within a short span of time CtrlS have

made a huge client base which includes SBI, Bharti Cement, Bajaj Allianz etc.

CtrlS advanced co-location services provide immediate scalability on space connectivity and

services as your requirements evolve. Round-the-clock monitoring by on-site personnel, security

barriers, CCTV surveillance and security breach alarms help safeguard the security of mission-

critical systems.

2.8.6 Key Features:

Controlled network and firewall

Manage your connections in the cloud through our interface and management tool within the

firewall, which helps customize and create different rules for different environments

Ease of use

Directing the life cycle of a virtual machine from an image to a totally functional device, through

our user interface, has never been easier!

Only the best

The entire feature list and functioning is facilitated through our alliance with top notch associates

including VMware, Dell, HP and CISCO.

Other features

Capacity analytics

Resource Manager



Infrastructure automation

Lifecycle management

24 x forever support

Cloud Backup & Storage: Automated Agent based disk to disk backup & retrieval,

Geographically Redundant with Encryption.

2.8.7 CtrlS Data Assurance – Experience the Power of Online Data Backup.

CtrlS Data Assurance allows you to back up your data online with just a click of a button. It is an

ideal solution for enterprises who wish to securely backup their data from unforeseen

contingencies like file corruption, accidental deletion, or hardware failure.

Be it databases like SQL, Microsoft Exchange, Active directory, Documents, Emails, Outlook

repository, etc. CtrlS Data Assurance covers them all in one comprehensive package! And its

intuitive User Interface with 1-Click backup selection for common backups ensures that users

can „self -service‟ their backup and restore requirements – reducing the demands on your system

administrator‟s time.

Reasons to choose CtrlS online backup services:

Easy to Manage

Affordable – Pay as you use

Robust Protection

High Performance

Scalable

Interoperable



2.8.8 The Ctrl S is the only India’s first and only Certified Tier IV Data

Center

Why Tier IV Certified?

The tier 4 certification will be given to the companies who maintain certain standards in

maintaining the data center.

The four Standards are:

Electrical

Telecom

Architectural

Mechanical

Electrical: The Company receives power from two different power plants.

Ramagundam and Srisailam, in which one is Thermal and another is Hydro, so that there

is uninterrupted power supply so the servers will be running 24/7, without causing the

downtime.

Telecom: It provides carrier neutral i.e., N+N redundancy so that if there is any internal

redundancy in one server and any problem persists it can automatically shift to another

server. Architectural: The company architecture is designed by their own. It was designed in

such a way that the walls are coated with manganese because if any fire persists it cannot

easily enter into the server room, so that we can protect the servers.

Mechanical: The Company is maintaining the 4 coolant pairs, so that it doesn‟t cause

any problem to servers, the coolant is operated for 3 hours continuously and it will

automatically shift to other, so that the life time of that can be increased.

2.8.9 Security Zones.

Six zone security at Hyderabad

CtrlS uses an intricate and impenetrable SIX Zone Security System to keep your data

away from unwanted visitors



Gunman at entrance and exit gates

Mantrap at datacenter entrance

24/7 security throughout the datacenter

Three levels of bio-metric access control for the server area

24/7 CCTV monitoring

Restriction of access to visitors

Entry into datacenter only with escort

Retention of photos and video footage for 30days

8 Zone securities Mumbai

Crash barrier

Building perimeter &watch tower manned by armed guards

Card Access based datacenter lifts

Card Access datacenter perimeter Baggage scanners &metal detectors

Access based man trap which allows one person at a time

Biometric – secured entrance to main datacenter area

Biometric /card- based access to the racks



Chapter 3

3.1Research Methodology Introduction: Research methodology is a way to

systematically solve the research problem, formulating a hypothesis, collecting the facts or data,

analyzing the fact and researching certain conclusions in the form of solutions towards the

concerned problems. Thus methodology not only talks about the research methods but also

consider the logic behind the method we use behind the context of our research study.

Fig 3.1: Research Methodology

3.2 Type of Research: Descriptive Research

3.3 DATA SOURCES:

The data sources we are mainly relying on are primary data. The primary data collected mainly

through market survey with the help of structured questionnaire and personal interview.



The data was collected through survey method wherein we obtained information based on

Questioning. The questions were mainly technical, awareness, interests, modification and,

satisfaction of the company.

Here the questions were asked verbally, in writing or via computers. The questions were

structured in the prearranged order and the questions were not varying according to the choices

made. The questions were simple to administer, data obtained was also reliable as questions had

limited choices and the sequence followed is fixed.

DATA COLLECTION:

The entire project is based on both primary data as well as secondary data and survey

methods. Data will be collected mainly by well-structured questionnaire and by analyzing the

survey reports and upcoming programs.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Electronic Mail Interviewing:

In mail interview we provided the people with the set of guidelines with each question as the

people do not like to read all the instructions at once. Here the mails were sent to the pre-selected

respondents based on convenience sampling. The responses provided are been recorded and

tabulated and provided with necessary data cleaning. The data collection and cleaning was done

simultaneously since the research being exploratory and data being qualitative in nature.

Personal Interviewing:

In personal interviewing we followed the home interview and the mall intercept method

were in the primary data collected was more of qualitative and authenticated and the interview

conducted was face-to-face and the respondents were even ready to give additional descriptive

answers. Since we were able to see them responding to the questions, the authentication and

correctness of the answer given was also estimable.

Primary data is a type of information that is obtained directly from first-hand sources by

means of surveys, observation or experimentation. It is data that has not been previously

published and is derived from a new or original research .Primary data is one, which is collected



for the first time and they are original in character, uniformity and homogeneity can be

maintained by extracting current information and is less risky than secondary data.

SECONDARY DATA

Secondary data are those, which already collected by someone for some purpose and are

available for the present study. The data for this study were collected from various magazines,

research reports Company Profiles, Company websites, Business World, Indian Journal of

Marketing, internet .

Sources of information for competitor analysis

The sources of competitor information can be grouped into three categories:

• Recorded data: this is easily available in published form either internally or externally.

Good examples include competitor annual reports and product brochures;

• Observable data: this has to be actively sought and often assembled from several

sources. A good example is competitor pricing;

• Opportunistic data: to get hold of this kind of data requires a lot of planning and

organization. Much of it is “anecdotal”, coming from discussions with suppliers, customers and,

perhaps, previous management of competitors.

The table below lists possible sources of competitor data using Davidson‟s

categorization:

Recorded Data

Annual report & accounts

Press releases

Newspaper articles

Analysts reports

Regulatory reports

Government reports

Presentations / speeches



Observable Data

Pricing / price lists

Advertising campaigns

Promotions

Tenders

Opportunistic Data

Meetings with suppliers

Trade shows

Sales force meetings

Seminars / conferences Discussion with shared distributors

