Ultimately, the purpose of undertaking an IC management program is to increase the value of your company.   If your IC program is not leading to greater company profits and/or value, then you must reassess your strategies and actions and modify the program so that it will lead to higher company value.

Understand what your customers value.

The product/service you sell to your customers is best considered as a bundle of characteristics, including price, quality, terms of purchase, terms of use, etc.   Of course, different customers may value different attributes.   However, to maximize the value of your product, you must understand which attributes your customers value most.   This enables you to optimize your product offerings so as to emphasize those characteristics that your customers actually value, as opposed to those characteristics that you think they (should) value.

Understand your company's value chain.

A value chain is the process by which a company creates value by converting inputs into outputs.   To understand your company's value chain, that is, how your company creates value, you must (1) track the relationships among the various inputs and outcomes, by (2) linking primary inputs to intermediate inputs, (3) linking intermediate inputs to final outputs, and (4) ultimately, link final outputs to financial performance.

Understand the context of information.

For information to be meaningful, it must be presented and understood within its proper context.   Information will have context when it is compared with its counterparts over time in this and other companies.   Information will also have context when it is presented together with information on other factors that impact upon the information at issue, and how those other factors have changed over time.

Track actionable information.

Expending scarce resources to collect information over which the company has no control and/or to which the company cannot respond might be marginally valuable.   However, collecting such information will not help the company manage its IC nearly as much as will collecting information over which the company does exert control and/or to which the company can optimize its response.