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What is the general process of Competitive Intelligence?
Home » Careers » Competitive Intelligence » What is the general process of Competitive Intelligence?Posted by Your Guide on January 18, 2006 3:58 PM
CI techniques vary within different businesses, based upon the specifics of the industry and the desires of a particular business. There is, however, a process that is fairly typical for CI work, regardless of the CI technique chosen by a company. A rough sketch of that process appears below:
• Planning: None of the steps within this process sketch are unimportant, but pre-planning is crucial. You’ll want to take the time to determine the exact nature of the information you want to collect about your competitors and your business market. In other words, it’s important to prefigure the required information and develop a framework that will allow you to classify and categorize the importance of that information.
• Data collection: This step involves the actual collection of the data you believe is important. It’s crucial that data collection proceed in a legal and ethical fashion, but there are many open sources of information that should allow you to gather all the necessary information about your competitors. As noted above, small businesses may glean information merely from the website of a rival company, and, for a fee, businesses such as Dunn and Bradstreet offer detailed information about many companies.
• Dissemination: After you’ve collected data, the next sensible step involves the dissemination of that data to those individuals within your business who possess the requisite means to act upon that data. If you’ve planned properly, your decision makers will quickly receive detailed, organized information that will give them an advantage over your rivals.
• Action: You’ve collected data on your competitors and your specific market, so this step is straightforward. Based upon competitors analysis and an enhanced understanding of the weak spots of your own company, you and your management staff can retool employee training techniques, product research and development approaches and marketing strategies.
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