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Business book:
the ultimate resource. voice activation applied, sorry for typos. Gathering competitive intelligence. Take a structured and proactive approach
to gathering competitive intelligence. Learn about things before the
event. Not after. Include strategy, mergers, and
acquisitions, pricing, marketing, advertising, and research and development. Advantages: minimizes surprises,
identifies opportunities and threats, learning from competitors, more
accurate assessments, competitors responses to your company. Good-great information. Disadvantages: keep an eye on
competitive environment as a whole. You need differentiation not copying. Too much information, unable to use
strategic information for decisions. Known as Paralysis by analysis. Action checklist. 1.
Make the commitment. Rarely will make the direct return on
investment. Senior management needs
to commit for available resources. 2.
Identify needs and objectives. Trying to find weak points, competitors
potential in new markets. Overall objective ideas. Information for strategic decisions,
early warnings of competitor activity, individual products or services,
pricing, recruitment drives, market behavior, strategy. Clear in specific objectives will reduce
information overload. Review objectives regularly. 3.
Bring together a team and assign responsibility. Verify the individual has good
communication and information skills, and the ability to work deadlines. 4.
Identify sources of information. The belief is that 80 percent of needed
information is already available inside company. Trade shows, online databases, Web
sites, magazines and newspapers, product catalogs, personal contacts in other
companies. Don't forget the front-line staff, they
hear a lot of stuff. 5.
Use technology. Databases,
remember copyright legislation, it is illegal to scan many documents for
electronic retrieval. Can use hard copy, by hand to reference
other materials electronically. Look
into this more. 6.
Circulate reports. If you
don't use it, you lose it. Weekly,
daily, maybe hourly. Intranets and
extranets hold vast potential, just think.
Personal comment, paper is not applied, electronic retrieval is the
modern world. 7.
Take action on the results.
Keep records with success and failure items. Don't counteract
competitors, without looking at companies own objectives. Only the right action at the right time
will bring you and advantage. 8.
Evaluate against objectives.
Evaluate your CI program against initial objectives. Are you on track. Draw the recommendations for improving the
CI system. Present data to above
leaders, along with details of the successes, and failures. 9.
Make changes. Take action on
the recommendations. Keep
communicating CI successes. 10.
Observe the ethical line. Gray
area at best. Sending employees to
job interviews at other companies.
Sorting through trash, is rated unethical. Computer hacking also unethical. Do's: use front-line staff, keep records
regularly. Remember competitors think
to. Recognize the importance of CI. Don't: spend money unnecessarily, be unethical. Thought starters. Have you ever been taken by surprise by
competitor. How much do you really know about your
main competitors. What are the strengths and weaknesses of
your competitors. End of data. |
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