Intelligence Plaza: Flexible and service-oriented
Jinfo Blog

By Scott Brown

Abstract

When I had the chance to review the Intelligence Plaza software product from Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA), I was impressed by a few things. One was the ability to customise; users and administrators have the ability to easily modify the dashboard interface.

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When I had the chance to review the Intelligence Plaza software product from Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA), I was impressed by a few things. One was the ability to customise; users and administrators have the ability to easily modify the dashboard interface. They can also set up a multitude of feeds from internal and external sources, without assistance from GIA. Intelligence Plaza also offers flexible tagging abilities, allowing customers to build and expand their internal taxonomies, again without assistance from GIA. Intelligence Plaza also has very tight integration with Microsoft SharePoint, making it a strong candidate for organisations already using SharePoint.

One other thing that impressed me was the service orientation and offerings of GIA. While admittedly I am not an official Intelligence Plaza customer, and so do not have first-hand experience of their service offerings, Intelligence Plaza’s customers do seem to be a loyal and satisfied bunch. Some of their original customers, who started using the product in 2000, are still customers of Intelligence Plaza. A case study from Fujitsu Services highlights working with GIA’s team as a positive, noting they “found GIA’s consultative engagement style considerably accelerated the implementation process”.

As I talked and emailed more with the GIA team, I continued to learn about the depth of their services. The setup and implementation of Intelligence Plaza is a comprehensive consulting process, with GIA ensuring that the customer’s intelligence needs are met. Granted, customers may pay more for additional services such having GIA’s Intelligence Services setup, for example, a set of initial sources to feed into Intelligence Plaza. They may choose to purchase a market monitoring service called Intelligence Desk, through which GIA analysts monitor the customer’s information sources and provide analysed information back to the customer.

But in simply interacting with my GIA contacts while writing the review of the product, I found the GIA team to be highly responsive and helpful, and quite willing to share as much information as they could. This is why, even though I wasn’t thoroughly “wowed” with the product, I became very impressed with the company’s service offerings. Especially with some new interface updates due in the autumn, Intelligence Plaza may be a good choice for companies looking to optimise and manage their intelligence cycle better.

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