Competitive Intelligence
- not just
Business Intelligence
- and
certainly, not
Espionage
Competitive Intelligence leads to breakthrough strategies
for competitive advantage. It's positioned as an unsung yet
indispensable corporate asset that plays a critical role in
developing new operating and marketing directions. Practical
examples from current markets illustrate the core competencies
required to deliver a durable competitive advantage. The winning
intelligence-active financial firms are effectively monitoring
and predicting their competitor's next move, conducting
exceptional SWOT analyses, and are more accurately determining
what is required to establish and successfully maintain a
vibrant leadership position in the marketplace.
To be a leading firm in this ultra competitive era, you have to
get your firm to the next level of intelligence -
competitive
intelligence, which is the demand-side of intelligence rather
than the supply side - business intelligence.
Your firm must transcend the commonly talked-about "business
intelligence" methods - with all its information-overload
problems for busy executives, who end up not being able to
meaningfully use any of the tons of "information" they
pile up. Remember,
"information is not knowledge" as Albert Einstein noted. In
fact, business intelligence is actually a fancy word for
old-fashioned market research, which every Dick, Tom and Harry
firm does. That's no big deal at all!
Business intelligence, unlike competitive intelligence, is the
one-size-fits-all approach that can hardly lead you
to develop any ultra competitive advantage for your firm or to
counter that of your competitor before it dislocates your own
strategies. Competitive
intelligence on the other hand, gives you more focused tools to know a lot more about what specific
things are
going to happen before they come close to happening. Thus you
can strategize and work
smarter to mitigate or leverage the specific events! And,
through this kind of sophisticated intelligence, you can become
more of a change-maker, than a change manager.
So, how would you like to have an in-house capability to
consistently develop the latest intelligence (resourcefully
derived through open sources and high-caliber analytics, and not
by spying) on your most ardent
competitors or other companies of interest, which are crucial to
your strategies? How would the latest information on your
competitors' major
clients and their other competitors be beneficial to you. Of
course, you can benefit from such information in so many ways!
Imagine being up-to-date with your competitor's planned new
projects, merger and acquisition activities, joint ventures,
organizational restructuring, financial results and the fortunes
of key corporate leaders - without breaking into their offices,
spying on anyone,
or lying to any body?
How about modern customer analytics, which shows you
everything you want to know about how and why your customers
chose you, why those customers you couldn't get or
keep are not responding to your marketing efforts or moves, and
how they're interacting with your competitors with whom they have
decided to do business instead of you?
With good
intelligence, you'll be able to focus your marketing resources
on campaigns and initiatives that deliver the highest possible ROI, and significantly
improve your firm's competitiveness, performance and
profitability.
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There are too many erroneous ideas about
competitive intelligence
Let's settle those very important things about
competitive intelligence (CI) - once and for all. Competitive
Intelligence is not dirty business.
Competitive intelligence has absolutely
nothing to do
with:
In fact, Competitive intelligence abhors all those despicable
practices. More accurately, it demands very highly ethical (and
much more than simply "legal") conduct. See SCIP's
Code of Ethics!
Competitive intelligence is a relatively unknown (or often
misunderstood) management tool that can make a big difference between
survival and prosperity for your firm.
It is a formalized, yet
continuously evolving business leadership process by which your top management team
assesses the evolution of the banking and
financial industry and the capabilities and
behavior of your current and potential competitors to assist you in
maintaining or developing a competitive advantage. (Prescott and
Gibbons 1993).
It provides you with information necessary to drive more
effective strategies. With the right amount of information,
you can avoid unpleasant surprises by anticipating
your competitors’ moves, market shifts and by decreasing response time. Through
competitive intelligence, your firm tries to ensure that you
have
accurate and current information about your competitors and your
market, and a plan
for using that information to your advantage (McGonagle & Vella,
1990).
There’s really a lot that financial firms are doing with
competitive intelligence. The intelligence-active firms are
really handling their competitors the way you ought to
handle your own competitors.
References
McGonagle, J.J. & Vella, C.M. (1990). Outsmarting the
Competition: Practical Approaches to Finding and Using
Competitive Information. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.
Prescott, J.E. & Gibbons, P.T. (1993). Global Competitive
Intelligence: An Overview. In J.E. Prescott, & P.T. Gibbons
(Eds.), Global Perspectives on Competitive Intelligence.
Alexandria, VA: Society of Competitive Intelligence
Professionals.
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