CONNECT EXECUTIVE INSIGHT A Look Forward   By Bonnie Hohhof Director of Competitive Research SCIP At the end of the year, it’s traditional to sit down and review our accomplishments and goals over the past year, and our possibilities for the coming year. Here are some observations on where your competitive intelligence has likely been and where it is going. 2010 was a difficult year for many staff functions, including competitive intelligence. Budgets tightened, projects were unfunded and we were being asked to continually do more with less. This places many individuals into an uncomfortable position, but looking at it from a glass-half-full position, it also provides opportunities and incentives to tighten our focus on what we do, how we do it, and who we do it for. Over the years, I have seen these elements significantly contribute to the success or failure of a competitive intelligence function. Let’s look at them. What We Do The goal of competitive intelligence is to increase the accuracy and quality of our management’s decision-making. We do this by monitoring elements of the external environment, developing perspective and insight into how these elements affect the competitiveness of our companies through analysis, and communicating those results to our internal intelligence clients as input to the decisions facing them. Too often the competitive intelligence efforts never make it past the monitoring and information gathering stage. Sometimes this reflects the interests and abilities of the people involved – it’s a straightforward effort that can be scheduled and has concrete deliverables. Other times it fills a major gap in a functional requirement – the recipients are very appreciative to have access to that information and to an individual who can obtain and organize information. However, this monitoring and information gathering effort by itself never reaches the level of becoming a critical component to corporate decision making. It’s a nice-to-have, makes-my-life-easier service that rarely survives the first round of the annual budget-cutting exercise. Providing analytical insight on how changes in the external environment affect your organization’s ability to be competitive is the core deliverable of competitive intelligence. As such, information is a necessary input to this analytical process, but the much more difficult and valuable deliverable is developed through rigorously analyzing that information and filtering it through the context of the decision at hand. This effort is complicated, the results are often ambivalent, and presenting conclusions is risky. But it’s what we do and why we’re valued. Look at where you have spent your time and effort over the past year, and adjust it to provide more time for analysis. My informal rule of thumb for time distribution on a project is 30% information, 50% analysis, 20% deliverable. Yours will vary. But next year go into every project with a time roadmap, and stick to it as much as you can. How We Do It Take a few minutes to look at what information sources you’ve tapped, what analytical techniques you’ve applied, and how you have delivered intelligence over the past year. Chances are they haven’t changed much. You’re either comfortable with your current processes, or you don’t have time to learn nor upgrade them. Here’s one of the values of belonging to a professional organization — you’re constantly exposed to new processes and new ideas, and being shown by your peers how to successfully apply them. Intelligence analytical techniques are continually being fine-tuned, and there’s probably one or two that can significantly improve your deliverables — and your value to your company. Make a point to become proficient with one or two of these new techniques over the next year. In this technologically-rich environment, we’re always being bombarded by new ways to acquire and distribute information. Some are interesting, a few may be necessary, and all of them are seductive. Carefully view them through the prism of their value-add to your intelligence processes, and adopt them when their advantages outweigh the time and effort to use them. Be creative, especially about how you deliver your intelligence products. Look at what your clients are familiar with and comfortable using. For example, consider the growing ubiquity of iPods and similar players. Do you also need to deliver your competitive intelligence in an MP3 audio format? Think about it. Who We Do It For Everyone in an organization can use some type of competitive information to do their job better. And once they find out what you do, they’re going to ask you to help them. Look at who you served over the last year and how that intelligence contributed to the success of your company. Decide who you need to say no to next year. Identifying your critical clients is a difficult process, and many of us constitutionally dislike turning down a request for help. But doing so is absolutely necessary if we are to provide the critical value that intelligence is capable of delivering to decision-makers. Look at your competitive intelligence efforts as if you were running an independent small business. Are there some clients who are difficult and time-consuming, and take from your other more valuable support efforts? Maybe they should be let go. Also look at who you are not supporting, but should be. Is there a senior manager who through their experience or personality sets the agenda and tone of key meetings and decisions? Is there someone who is a key player in budget decisions who really should be more familiar and supportive of your efforts? Take the time now to evaluate where you were successful over the last year, and determine what parts of your competitive intelligence function require upgrading, downgrading, or just a quick check-up. Also consider how you can leverage your SCIP membership benefits and conferences to make you more successful next year. SCIP 2011 International Annual Conference & Exhibition May 9-12, 2011 Orlando, FL 12th Annual Marketing World, 2011 February 8-10, 2011 New Orleans, LA   More Frost & Sullivan Events More SCIP Hosted Events   We Want Your Input Call for Papers To Advertise       The Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) merged with the non-profit Frost & Sullivan Institute in 2009. 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