Marrying Competitive Intelligence, Business Intelligence and Analytics

by admin , May 7, 2007

Business intelligence companies are starting to how they are relevant to the gathering of competitive intelligence in the organization. Surprisingly, they are demonstrating how to leverage your customers (of all people) to gain the necessary intelligence to compete more effectively.

Jerome Bergerou of AccuraCast says the following:

“In an increasingly competitive world, using your client database smartly, to gain a better understanding of your number one asset your customers can make or break the success of your company.”

“One of the primary reasons companies do not fully realize the potential competitive advantages they can gain from their own databases is the lack of proper integration of datasets across departments. Even though all the information might reside within the company, it may remain elusive due to a fragmentation of the data across incompatible databases. Regrouping all internal data into a single dataset or a series of interconnected datasets could be the single most useful step a company might take towards providing a solid foundation on which quality business intelligence can be developed.”

This article goes on to demonstrate some specific techniques in building a BI repository and system that would be of benefit to most companies. If you are interested in my content, you should probably check them out, too.

I agree whole-heartedly that the quest for competitive intelligence needs to be founded on the most productive sources of information. And, there has to be more to analyzing the data than gut feelings and educated hopes. Analytics are not just important; they are essential to making sense of the information. Otherwise, the intelligence may be skewed by the loudest voice or hidden trends may be ignored.

If you have some ideas on competitive intelligence and analytics, Id enjoy talking to you (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence Needs a Personal Touch

by admin , May 4, 2007

I am a little hard of hearing today after yelling and cheering at the Utah Jazz/Houston Rockets game. What a great game! The crowd was nuts. The players played hard, and (more importantly for Jazz fans) there will be a game 7 on Saturday night.

You may have already seen this, but check out the Google driving directions from New York to London, UK: (click here)

The fun of it is when you consider that these are driving directions. The best part is looking all the way down the list and finding out that the Google people know that you cant drive across the Atlantic Ocean. However, they have a practical alternative.

This does have a point.

The Google directions are smart enough to tell you that youre going to have to swim to cross the ocean. Someone at Google had the notion to take a piece of information that was delivered automatically and insert a custom bit of instruction that is either useful or entertaining, depending on your point of view.

If you provide competitive intelligence in your organization, you have to help advise the users on different points. If you leave everything to the reader of the data, it is possible that they will end up in the wrong place with the wrong tools. Use your experience to understand the context of the data and provide recommendations.

One of the worst things that can happen to intelligence is to orphan a report or brief in a department. In most companies, they will suffer from neglect. Very sad, indeed.

And, I think the Jazz will beat the Rockets in game 7. Goooooo JAZZ!

Let me know what you think (mailto:cdalley@primary-intel.com,, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Effectiveness to Greatness Making the Leap

by admin , May 2, 2007

I just read an article titled, Dr. Stephen R. Covey Interview, Going from Effectiveness to Greatness, Featuring Jay Abraham. This conversation seemed to offer a lot of nuggets in a few pages.

The article is not specifically written for competitive intelligence professionals. In fact, at times, it is geared toward the entrepreneur and small business owner, but Ill share a couple of excerpts from the article in todays blog. If you want to read the article in its entirety, click here.

In summary, Dr. Covey takes his principles of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and promotes a way of thinking and being that moves from effectiveness to greatness. For example:

JAY ABRAHAM: Define Greatness in the organization
DR. COVEY: Well, I would say that a great organization would be one that has sustainable impact on all of its stakeholders for good. That includes the whole supply chain, obviously the customers And the culture would be extremely empowered to use a lot of initiative in making great things happen. And also, I think another characteristic would be that the people are constantly growing and improving their skills, their knowledge base, and their capacities to become even greater in the future. I think one of the biggest problems is sustainability — that many people are like cotton candy. It tastes good, and then within a short period of time it just is worthless, essentially, and nothing happens. But to make it sustainable, to me, is one of the great keys.

JAY ABRAHAM: What changes or shifts would you recommend they make to convert their enterprise from tactical, reactive, episodic, to strategic, enduring, and basically a geometric growth machine?
DR. COVEY: I would say a couple of things. One would be I would make sure that I surround myself with people who are different than me — who think differently, who challenge — so that you can get the spirit of synergy in producing a strategic plan that everyone gets emotionally connected to. And I would try to get them very involved in this development of this strategic plan so that they really have a clear sense of what the most important goals are, and also what the values are. Because if you have commonality on the values which never change, then you apply those values in getting synergy and developing strategic goals and plans to achieve those goals. Then youve tapped into as much wisdom as possible.

JAY ABRAHAM: you talk a lot about the difference between proactivity and reactivity. Can you shareproactive things that great leaders do continuously, predictably, that average, ordinary business owners dont seem to understand?
DR. COVEY: Well, I would say one proactive thing is that they decide what their mission is, and what their values are in the context of a larger vision. And I think that most reactive people tend to just kind of live out old programs that have been given to them by other people and by other models that theyve had. I think another thing is that they start investing in people and in the building of high-trust relationships, where the reactive people kind of hope that trust will result. They dont proactively nourish the relationship.

Another one is they really get invested in the growth and development of people for instance, the very thing were doing here. If theyre learning things from this, they would want to immediately share this with the people around them that might have an interest so that they create a kind of a learning ethic — not just a hard work ethic, but a learning ethic– so that people say, Boy, hes really interested in my growth and development, and in my career.

I think another one is they set up empowerment agreements with people so that they dont have to hover over, check up, follow through, and kind of micro-manage people according to the way they normally would clone someone. But they realize that every personality is different, will often take a different tack. But as long as there is a common agreement on the overall strategic purpose and goals, thats the important thing. And therefore, you allow other people to express themselves.

Reactive people tend to be firefighters that are impulsively running to and fro and trying to solve problems. They almost get addicted to urgency, rather than being addicted to focusing on that which is important, the Pareto Principle, where 80% of the results come from the 20% of the key activities that produce those results. And I think that what I call Quadrant Two — that which is important but not urgent — is the basic thrust of proactive people

Most people are drowned by the urgent, and the important often gets neglected because the urgent acts on you. Its right in front of you. Its pressing. Its like a ringing phone. And they get so addicted to it they almost feel guilty if they focus on long term, strategic thinking and listening in depth to other people because theyre frantic. Theyre just driven by action and by constantly wanting to make things happen. They dont take time to reflect, and to gain a deeper understanding of what the real needs are, and to also deeply understand another person and to find out what their voice is… what is unique about that personthat they have certain talents and passion. They dont do that. They talk more than they listen. They should realize they have two ears and one mouth, and use them accordingly.

(copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved, www.abraham.com)

I know that this post contains a large chunk of information that might not seem applicable at first, but take a look at your position.

-Are you providing information, services or solutions that will make your company more competitive from the strategic and tactical levels?
-Does your department (and those with whom you interact) position itself to be effective (at the least) and potentially great? Does your organization support this type of thinking and growth?
-Are you drowned by the urgent without having time to work on the important?
-Do you have balance in your life that allows you to be great in the most important things?

Print this document. Mark it up with your notes. And, if you are a self-improvement geek, date your notes. Then, next time you read it and mark it up some more, compare the parts that were important during the first read to those that impress you the second time around. You might learn something about the changing priorities and perspectives in your life.

Anyway, Ill return to the Competitive Intelligence topic in the next post. Thanks for todays indulgence.

And, if you find a nugget of info that means something to you, place a comment or contact me (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)