The Role of Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence involves veritable monitoring of every facet of an organisation's internal and external environment, keeping all elements and influences under observation, sniffing out changeabilities and attendant challenges, providing key action pointers for decision-making, continuously reviewing conditions and executing counteractive measures against undesirable information incursion. It allows firms to distinguish themselves in a competitive outlay beyond the elementary focus of immediate gains that can spring up as albatross. In practice, it shoots up as foresight peddled with the benefit of hindsight, through well-calculated and widely orchestrated processes that haul beams onto new action themes for appropriate leadership and corporate responsiveness.
Sun Tzu theorized "if you are ignorant of your enemy and yourself, then you are a fool and certain to be defeated in every battle". While Bronson Alcott insisted that "To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of ignorance". Even the fields of plain corporate enemies and outright opposition to organisational bliss stand as icons of misinterpretation to many decision makers, due to manifold convolution characterizing their identities. The masquerading veils of intriguing environmental forces, and their seemingly extensive positive clout usually woo business leaders, catapulting action for prospecting a frontier that appear as good location for swimming but indeed it's a shark colony. Competitive Intelligence takes veils out of faces, for proper identification of true positions.
The products and deliverables of competitive intelligence includes the following:
- Early Warning Alerts
- Market Audits
- Industry Audits
- Customer Profiles
- Competitor Profiles
- Technology Profiles
- Supplier Profiles
- Competitive Benchmarking
- Innovation Audit
- Development Audit
Application Focus of Competitive Intelligence includes the following:
- Cost Management
- Sales Management
- Business Development
- Checkmating Competitors Profits and Sales
- Improving Organisational Agility
- Brand Evolution
- Winning Price Wars
- Overcoming Performance Barriers
- Alliance Development
- Business Modeling
- Technology Assessment
- New Venture Development
- Business Opportunities Assessment
- Business Risk Assessment
- Satisfaction Surveys
- Crafting Strategy
- Environmental Scanning
- Competitive Talent Development
- Strategic Course-Plotting
- Acquisition and Prevention of Acquisition
- Mergers
- Organisational Development
- Product Positioning
- Knowledge Management
- Exploitation and Protection of Intellectual Property
- Counter-Intelligence
- Information Security
- Operational Excellence Programmes
- Supply Chain Analysis and Management
- Boosting Customer Relationship Management Through Monitoring Programmes
- Day-to-Day Decision-Making
- Monitoring Competitors Strategies, Plans, Programmes, Projects and Actions
- Due Diligence
