What is CIPA?

CIPA stands for Competitive Intelligence and Predictive Analytics.

It is an emerging, highly structured and critical business function that closely scrutinizes and performs sophisticated analysis of the entire spectrum of the competitive environment. It is both a process and a product, which seeks to overcome many paradoxes of knowledge and intelligence expertise.

The process of CIPA resides in the action, by various professionals, of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about products, domain constituents, customers, and competitors for the short and long term strategic needs of an organization. The product of CIPA is the output – the actionable intelligence – ascertained by the pre-defined needs of the organization.

CIPA deeply explores and analyzes the environment in order to understand its dynamics and be positioned to predict competitors' and customers' intentions, government actions, and the movement of other environmental forces.

CIPA thrives on:

	Skilled human intelligence (HUMINT)
	Computational rationality (CRT)
	Qualitative analysis
	Mathematical analysis

All Hands uses the Lockwood Analytic Method of Prediction (LAMP) as the base for CIPA. In any well-organized CIPA function, customer benefits are usually the central focus.

In a recent study of Citigroup, Fidelity and a few other major intelligence-active firms in the US (including many non-financial firms), the Best Practices Group, which has its roots at the Harvard Business School observed as follows:

High performing (CIPA) organizations operate within a framework that emphasizes customer focus to shape projects that have maximum impact.

Recent advances in data mining and analytics have made CIPA even more sophisticated and effective by allowing intelligence professionals to "discover" knowledge otherwise concealed in huge databases. The computer algorithms that make this possible are based on sophisticated mathematics and on new, intelligent ways of integrating computer power and human intelligence.

Good judgment is a “must” in business. But, to use data along with good judgment? That’s intelligence! The computer algorithms that make CIPA possible are based on sophisticated mathematics and on new ways of integrating computer power and human intelligence.

A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that many human thoughts, actions and direction of events can be so well derived or predicted by combining human brains, computational reasoning and mathematical juggling.

CIPA results in breakthroughs and in keeping corporate enterprises adopting it ahead of the game, so that they are not taken unawares, outsmarted or outperformed. And CIPA bolsters a company’s specific strategies and targets.
 

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