Effective Competitive Intelligence Dont Let Indecision Derail You

by admin , October 8, 2007

No matter how you practice competitive intelligence, you have to be concerned with the fact that your CI program must be effective in your business. Much emphasis has been put on various programs in the company and their effectiveness. To me effective is a relative term. There are so many levels of effectiveness that almost anything can be graded as effective. The real talent and wisdom are manifest in ones ability to differentiate between lower and higher levels.

So, what are the effectiveness qualifiers for competitive intelligence? Ill stick with a definition put forth earlier in this same blog (which was also a topic in our recent webinar which can be downloaded HERE). The mission of effective Competitive Intelligence should be to:

Strengthen your companys position
How is our value proposition perceived?
What is the competition doing?
Which industry-wide best practices will truly apply?
Discover new markets
What is possible with new technologies?
Where should we steer the company?
Develop new products/services/solutions
What problems do our clients experience that we can address?

Indecision
There are so many obstacles to producing effective intelligence. The first of these obstacles is indecision. This indecision devalues intelligence efforts and, in some cases, leads to the dissolution of the actual intelligence efforts.

What is the real problem with indecision? Its the fact that nobody can agree on what should be studied or what results should come of the efforts. Often, executives will request specific bits of information while other departments create laundry lists of potential topics.

In way too many cases, a strategic plan for intelligence is lacking. Evidence of this environment usually rears its head with the philosophy of Lets grab everything we can and Once we have the intelligence, well know what to do with it. The most dangerous symptom is a company that is very reactive in its intelligence efforts. What just happened?!?! Go find out what [competitor x] is doing!

The truth of the matter is that this lack of system usually leads to way too much information which can not be prioritized. The abundance of information leads to overload and blindness. The end result is that the intelligence is used less and less until the prevailing feeling is that the intelligence is not useful after all. From this point on, corporate decisions will not be based on the intelligence efforts, but on experience and such.

Without a competitive intelligence strategy that makes effectiveness a strong characteristic of success, the intelligence group is likely to marginalize its own value.

Recommendation
So, the recommendation is that you have to make your company be decisive about its intelligence efforts. Develop a set of effectiveness criteria or use those that I included above. Measure your strategy against its ability to be effective. And, be enough of a salesperson to sell this idea to your management and on up the chain.

Create a habit of decisiveness around your intelligence efforts, strategies and plans. Otherwise, indecision will trivialize your best efforts.

Thoughts? Leave me a comment or we can chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

Webinar Wrap-up: Effective Competitive Intelligence

by admin , October 5, 2007

Last Thursday, Mike Brose and I hosted a webinar called, The Sad Story of Intelligence that Didnt Make a Difference. That is a fairly lengthy title and Ill work on being more concise in the future.

But I digress

Over time, we have seen many organizations that spend money on intelligence initiatives. Those initiatives might be market, sales or competitive intelligence. Most every company conducts some form of intelligence gathering. Whether primary or secondary, the intelligence is deemed important enough to have an effect on the success of the business.

However, we have also observed that many companies spend resources on the gathering of intelligence but have very little commitment to the use of that information. Rarely will a business spend so much money with so little regard for the potential return on investment. I take that back. Advertising seems to often fall into that category. But, thats not the topic

The topic of the webinar was based on helping companies make more effective use of the intelligence at hand. We expressed that we were not so concerned with the source or topic of the intelligence. Instead, we suggested how any type of intelligence might display more potential simply by making sure that it would be acted upon.

If you would like to download a copy of the presentation, please click HERE

And, if you would like a summary, delivered in person, or would like to subscribe to our webinar notifications, send me an email and Ill make sure to keep you in the loop. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Competitive Intelligence Newsletter Make Intelligence Relevant

by admin , October 3, 2007

In this edition, Adam Dunford makes the case for intelligence that makes a difference. The blog entry backs up the idea by showing a case of intelligence that wasnt effective, and wasnt going to be from the start.

If you would like to subscribe to this free newsletter, simply send a request to newsletter@primaryintelligence.com with your name and email address. You can also register for the same subscription online in the margin of any of the stories below.

Cover Story
Justifying Your Existence (and CI’s too!)
By Adam Dunford, Primary IntelligenceSo you’ve spent the last several weeks and months gathering your CI data. In your presentation, you nail every important point on each of your 40 slides and can answer every question you get asked. As you finish, you hear it’s the “best CI presentation ever”. A few days later, fresh off your triumph, you ask for the budget to expand your CI program, only to be told, “It’s interesting stuff, but we got what we needed.” Ouch.(For more, click here)

BlogCentral
You Couldn’t Make Competitive Intelligence So Irrelevant if you Tried
If your idea of effective competitive intelligence is gathering a bit of information, consolidating that information into a brief doc (perhaps on an attractive company letterhead) and sending that doc off to a distribution list, please stop reading. Go back to your cube, surf some more web sites and live a happy life…(For more, click here)
The A-List Archive

Sun Microsystems Decides that Two Companies are Better than One
Originally Published in February 2005.
Sun Microsystems, which was already outsourcing many of its HR business processes, including its 401(k) plan, payroll, and benefits administration, wanted to explore the idea of outsourcing additional HR functions…(For more, click here)

Competitive Intelligence The Difference Between Interesting and Effective

by admin , October 1, 2007

I always think that it is critical to make your competitive intelligence efforts as effective as possible. Over time, we at Primary Intelligence have seen so many initiatives, either in play or proposed, that seek to know just about anything you can imagine. Many requests have been merely puzzling while others have been, at best, illegal.

These questionable requests include things like: (Skip to the bottom of the list to resume the idea of the thread)

Of course, those RFPs always included the instructions, No illegal methods may be undertaken to gather this information.

When I see such requests, I have to ask the question, How will this help a company sell more? I can see why the information is interesting. In fact, I have a definition of interesting information. Basically, anything that a company doesnt know is easy to categorize as interesting.

But, interesting doesnt often generate revenue. Interesting doesnt make more sales happen. Interesting might not even make the company stronger. Interesting might only be interesting to one person; not to an entire company.

So, how does one sort out the difference between interesting and effective?

Start by defining those things that your company defines as effective. How do you make choices about services in other industries? How does your company define ROI? Certainly, healthy companies do not make a habit out of wasting dollars.

If you need some ideas, let me share some of ours. What makes intelligence effective? In order to be effective, the intelligence should:

1 Strengthens your companys position

How is our value proposition perceived?
What is the competition doing?
Which industry-wide best practices will truly apply?

2 Discovers new markets

What is possible with new technologies?
Where should we steer the company?

3 Develops new products/services/solutions

What problems do our clients experience that we can address?

Apply this litmus test to your current efforts. Compare the day-to-day requests against these standards. If the comparison leaves you wanting, you have to figure out how to put changes and such in place to stop the cycle of interesting, but worthless information.

If you have a different set of effective definitions that work for your company, lets chat. I would appreciate your input. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)