What Is Competitive Intelligence?
Almost two decades ago, Helicon’s partners and others struggled to get businesses to recognize at least one form of active intelligence. It was (and sometimes still is) variously called competitive intelligence, business intelligence, corporate intelligence, competitive information, commercial intelligence, etc. Most practitioners have settled on one term - competitive intelligence, known as CI.
CI consists of two overall facets.
First is the use of public sources
to develop data (raw facts) on competition, competitors, and the market
environment.
Second is the transformation, by analysis,
of that data into information (usable results).
CI, as it is practiced today, has become divided into two major areas, active and defensive.
Active CI involves the
development of intelligence on all aspects of businesses and the competitive
environment. Active CI processes are those aimed at collecting raw data and
analyzing that data to provide finished intelligence. The active CI may be
prepared by a CI unit for use by an internal corporate client, by an external
consultant or a research firm as an input to a CI unit’s reports, or by the same
person who will use it. In each case, the production of the intelligence is
conducted following a formal, commonly understood process, known as the CI
cycle. It is then to be used as an input to improve decision-making. Active CI
is, in turn, divided into four different types: strategy-oriented,
tactics-oriented, target-oriented and technology-oriented.
Defensive CI is the way we
describe the process of protecting your firm against the competitive
intelligence efforts of your competitors. Defensive CI processes are heavily
dependant on a working knowledge of CI techniques. However, when properly
conducted, defensive CI involves CI professionals in an educational or advisory
role only. That is, CI professionals use their skills and experience to help
their firm determine what kinds of raw data competitors will probably try to
capture, teach all company employees to understand what is competitively
sensitive information that they should protect, and to understand how to
protect that data.
A key maxim common to each of the variations of CI is that 90 percent of all information that a company needs to make key decisions and to understand its market and competitors is already public or can be systematically, legally and ethically developed from public data.
In any form of intelligence, the term “public” is to taken in its very broadest sense-it encompasses more than what the US Department of Commerce releases or what you can find in The New Straits [Singapore] Times. Public in CI is not equivalent to published; it is a significantly broader concept. Public, in CI, means all information you can legally and ethically identify, locate, and then access. It ranges from a document released by a competitor as a part of a local zoning application to an interview with a member of an advertising agency working for a competitor.
For further information, click here to read “Frequently Asked Questions” at the home page of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.