A key activity that organisations should focus on is to identify and analyse the trends across different areas of their business.

NextWave Research Solutions (www.nextwavers.com) is a leading market research company in Pune, India. As part of its market analysis projects, it carries out an analysis of the industry trends.

This enables organisations to seize new opportunities, identify upcoming threats and create a powerful strategy that gets results.

The key trends that need to be analysed are:

Market Trends :

Which is the market segment that is showing the highest growth and why?

Technology Trends :

What are the major technology trends?

Which technologies represent important opportunities or disruptive threats?

Competitor Analysis Trends :

What are the latest developments with respect to competitors?

Which are the areas they are focusing on?

Regulatory Trends :

Which regulatory trends may affect your business?

Which regulations and taxes affect customer demand?

Societal Trends :

Which shifts in cultural or societal values affect your business?

Which trends might influence buyer behaviour?

A failure to recognise the trends can even lead to your business becoming obsolete.

Companies are recommended to develop a trends tracker wherein they can map and track the trends in their particular industry.

Abbas Naqvi, Director – Research, NextWave Research Solutions, www.nextwavers.com