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| Information that
has been analyzed to the point where you can make a
decision. |
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Spying.
Spying implies illegal or unethical activities. While spying does take
place, it is a rare activity. Think about it; corporations do not want to
find themselves in court, nor do they want to upset shareholders. For the
most part, you will find spies in espionage novels, not in the executive
suite. |
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| A tool to alert
management to early warning of both threats and
opportunities. |
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A crystal
ball. There is no such thing as a true forecasting tool. Intelligence
does give corporations good approximations of reality, near- and
long-term. It does not predict the future. |
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| A means to
deliver reasonable assessments. Competitive intelligence offers
approximations and best views of the market and the competition. It is not
a peek at the rival's financial books. Reasonable assessments are what
modern entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell
need, want, and use on a regular basis. They don't expect every detail,
just the best assessment at the time. |
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Database
search. Databases offer just that — data. Of course it is wonderful to
have these remarkable tools. Nevertheless, databases do not massage or
analyze the data. They certainly do not replace human beings who need to
make decisions by examining the data and applying their common sense,
experience, analytical tools, and intuition. |
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| Comes in many
flavors. Competitive intelligence can mean many things to many people.
A research scientist sees it as a heads-up on a competitor's new R&D
initiatives. A salesperson considers it insight on how his or her company
should bid against another firm in order to win a contract. A senior
manager believes intelligence to be a long-term view on a marketplace and
its rivals. See our Strategic Intelligence Organizer tool on fuld.com for
examples of the many flavors of competitive intelligence and tips on how
to develop it. |
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The Internet or
rumor chasing. The Net is primarily a communications vehicle, not a
deliverer of intelligence. You can find hints at competitive strategy, but
you will also uncover rumors disguised as fact, or speculation dressed up
as reality. Be wary of how you use or misuse the Net. Its reach is great,
but you need to sift, sort, and be selective on its content. |
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| A way for
companies to improve their bottom line. Companies, such as NutraSweet,
have attributed many millions of dollars in earned revenue to their
intelligence usage. See our CI Success Stories on fuld.com for over 100
excerpts telling how companies have used CI successfully. |
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Paper. Paper
is the death of good intelligence. Think face-to-face discussion or a
quick phone call if you can, rather than paper delivery. Never equate
paper with competitive intelligence. Yes, you must have a way to convey
critical intelligence. Unfortunately, many managers think that by spending
countless hours on computer-generated slides, charts and graphs, and
footnoted reports, they have delivered intelligence. All they have managed
to do is to slow down the delivery of critical intelligence. In the
process, they have likely hidden the intelligence by over-analyzing it.
Remember: Paper cannot argue a point — you can. |
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| A way of life, a
process. If a company uses CI correctly, it becomes a way of life for
everyone in the corporation — not just the strategic planning or marketing
staff. It is a process by which critical information is available for
anyone who needs it. That process might be helped by computerization, but
its success rests upon the people and their ability to use it. |
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A job for one,
smart person. A CEO might appoint one individual to oversee the CI
process, but that one person cannot do it all. At best, the CI Ringmaster,
the coordinator of the program, keeps management informed and ensures that
others in the organization become trained in ways to apply this tool
within each of their SBUs. |
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| Part of all
best-in-class companies. In my 20 years of consulting in this arena, I
have witnessed that high-quality, best-in-class corporations apply
competitive intelligence consistently. The Malcolm Baldridge Quality
Award, the most prestigious total quality award for American corporations,
includes the gathering and use of external market information (a.k.a. CI)
as one of its winning qualifications. |
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An invention of
the 20th century. CI has been around as long as business itself. It
may have operated under a different name, or under no name at all, but it
was always present. Just review the story surrounding 19th century British
financier Nathan Rothschild, who managed to corner the market on British
government securities by receiving early warning of Napoleon's defeat at
Waterloo. He used carrier pigeons, the E-mail of his day. He knew the
information to watch and how to make sense of it; in the end, he used this
intelligence to make a killing in the market. |
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| Directed from the
executive suite. The best-in-class intelligence efforts receive their
direction and impetus from the CEO. While the CEO may not run the program,
he dedicates budget and personnel; most important, he promotes its
use. |
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Software.
Software does not in and of itself yield intelligence. The CI market is
hot, and numerous software houses are producing products for the
intelligence marketplace. Many more are repositioning existing software —
in particular, data warehousing and data mining packages — for use in
intelligence. Software has become an important weapon in the CI arsenal,
but it does not truly analyze. It collects, contrasts, and compares. True
analysis is a process of people reviewing and making sense of the
information. |
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| Seeing outside
yourself. Companies that successfully apply competitive intelligence
gain an ability to see outside themselves. CI pushes the not-invented-here
syndrome out the window. |
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A news story.
Newspaper or television reports are very broad and are not timely enough
for managers concerned with specific competitors and competitive issues.
If a manager first learns of an industry event from a newspaper or
magazine report, chances are others in the industry already learned of the
news through other channels. While media reports may yield interesting
sources for the CI analyst to interview, they are not always the most
timely, or specific enough for critical business decisions. |
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| Both short- and
long-term. A company can use intelligence for many immediate
decisions, such as how to price a product or place an advertisement. At
the same time, you can use the same set of data to decide on long-term
product development or market positioning. |
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A
spreadsheet. "If it's not a number, it's not intelligence." This is an
unspoken, but often thought of, refrain among managers. "If you can't
multiply it, then it is not valid." Intelligence comes in many forms, only
one of which is a spreadsheet or some quantifiable result. My firm has
completed numerous strategic assessments, where the numbers only address
one aspect of the problem. Management thinking, marketing strategy, and
ability to innovate are only three among a host of issues that rely on a
wide range of subjective, non-numeric
intelligence. |
