Useful tools, successful strategies, and helpful tips for conducting Competitive Intelligence CI: A

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Useful tools, successful strategies, and helpful
tips for conducting Competitive Intelligence
(CI) A facilitated discussion

• Barbie E. Keiser
• Second SEE Business
• Information Forum
• Sofia, Bulgaria
• November 20, 2008

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What is Competitive Intelligence?

• Effective CI is a systematic program (continuous
  process) for the legal and ethical collecting,
  objective analyzing, and controlled dissemination
  of actionable intelligence to decision-makers
  about competitors activities, general business
  trends, and marketplace dynamics that is used to
  further your own organizations goals

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Whats required for success?

• Developing a system for continuous monitoring
• Trends
• Competitors
• Disseminating intelligence to decision-makers
• Ability to manage deliverables (and expectations)
• Providing insight and understanding on issues so
  that decisions can be made
• Facilitating change
• Fully understanding the business
• Making recommendations
• Measuring success

• Understanding business needs and objectives
• Identifying key decision-makers and their
  intelligence needs/wants/preferences
• Identifying and accessing unique (re)sources on a
  regular basis
• Using secondary sources as a springboard to
  primary
• Managing diverse information resource types and
  formats
• And information collected from them
• Synthesizing and analyzing information (external
  and internal)
• Recognizing patterns
• Sensing change
• Interpreting/clarifying conflicting information

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What do decision-makers need from you to act?

• Understanding of (and involvement in) the process
• Value-added insight
• Impact and implications
• Clarity of options presented in the deliverable
• Metric for success
• Importance of assessment/feedback loops

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Whats required to develop a successful CI
function?

• Focus on CI that delivers business benefits
• Build a team with a mix of strengths/skill sets
• Organize a useful set of information
  resources/sources to be tapped when needed
• Conduct analysis that provides insight
• KISS
• Make it an ongoing process, not a snapshot

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Intelligence Cycle
Other users
Information Collection
Information Organization/Management
Source Competitive Intelligence Magazine, 5(3)
May-June, 2002, p. 16.
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Useful tools, successful strategies and helpful
tips for
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Defining, planning, and directing the CI effort

• Shifting priorities, size, scope, and nature of
  your CI program
• Team/skill sets/core competencies
• Centralized/decentralized
• Location within the organization
• Support

• Identifying comparables
• Success factors
• Challenges you have faced in the past
• Changes that would most help improve your
  organization's competitive intelligence process

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Collecting data and information Exploiting
secondary and primary sources

• Market, industry, company resources
• Use of multi-lingual resources/translators
• Alert services
• Social networking tools of Web 2.0
• Identifying useful conferences for your CI effort
• Identifying experts

• Questions to pose concerning facts
• Ethical dilemmas
• Challenges you have faced in the past
• Changes that would most help improve your
  organization's competitive intelligence process

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Organizing information and managing intelligence
(synthesis)

• FISH framework
• Knowledge management and tools
• How does your analysis convert information into
  intelligence?

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Where are we?

• Focus
• Gather
• Analyze (to develop insights)
• Apply

• Decision
• Assumptions/unknowns
• Intelligence questions
• Indicators
• Sources
• Analysis

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Analytic process

• Data

Explanation
Implications
Action
Trends Insights
What should happen?
Something is happening
Why is it happening?
What could happen?
What is happening?
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Focus for your intelligence

• Do you really need a comprehensive competitor
  profile?
• What should you do when time is limited?
• What decisions do you face today (anticipate
  facing in the future) and what intelligence will
  help you make better decisions?
• Where is the product within the life cycle?
• Evolutionary issues in the marketplace

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Performing analyses

• FAROUT
• PEST/STEEP
• SBU attractiveness
• Industry/industry segment analysis
• General/focused business analysis (ratios)
• Determining segment attractiveness
• Product and market analyses
• Customer segmentation analysis
• Trend analysis
• Financial analysis forensics
• Success/failure analysis
• Porters Five Forces
• Value Net Model
• Four Corners Analysis
• Matrices
• Growth-Share Market size, market share, market
  growth
• Critical Success Factors (CSF)
• Counter intelligence

• Counter intelligence
• Competitor profiling/benchmarking
• Competitor response modeling
• Core competencies
• Patent citation analysis
• SWOT/TOWS/RSWOT
• Value chain/ Supply value chain analysis
• SCOR model
• Cost analysis
• Activity-based costing (ABC)
• Economic value management
• Risk analysis business, industry, management
• Forecasting analytical techniques
• Scenario building
• Early warning indicator development
• Hypothesis-based tools
• War gaming
• Shadow teams
• Blindspots

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Business intelligence and strategy failures can
often be attributed to..

• Organizational silos
• Groupthink
• Analytic silos
• What is not seen (blindspots)
• Seeing is not believing, but noticing what others
  do not

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Intelligence generation and reporting

• Challenge of data deluge How can you use
  technology effectively to
• Set priorities
• Focus valuable analyst attention/time
• What to consider for presentations
• Content
• Context
• Client

• Mosaic
• Collect pieces of information then try to fit
  them into a pattern
• Either discard all the outliers OR discard
  everything except the outliers
• Visualization tools
• Visual dashboard

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Technologies and tools

• Office and web-based tools
• Collaboration tools
• Search or text retrieval software
• Text mining
• Content or document management
• CI systems
• Intelligence portals
• Reputation monitors

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Improvement through feedback
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CI applies to all functional areas
Planning
Product Mgmt
New Product Dev.
Operations
Requiring Targeted Source Monitoring, Focused
Delivery, Sharing/Exchange of Resulting Ideas
Marketing
Sales
IT
RD
HR
Finance
Strategic Planning
Legal/IP
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Questions?

• Thank you and feel free to be in touch
• barbieelene_at_att.net or bkeiser1_at_jhu.edu