Part 2 - The Transformation of Competitive Intelligence, and How a Company’s Existence Depends on It

...continuation of prior post about Competitive Intelligence Organization Infrastructure...

Is Your Intelligence Organization Structured Appropriately?

Organizational hierarchy is also key to the appropriate development and implementation of a comprehensive (x)I strategy. Too often, intelligence functions reside in individual business units, regional sales organizations, or corporate functions that are ineffectively positioned within a company to take advantage of the findings from the intelligence activity. Silo-based intelligence organizations are detrimental on several fronts; they provide only a single perspective on intelligence, have a limited pool of peripheral research connections, and their findings are essentially one-dimensional – they do not take into consideration the intelligence impacts on a company from a systemic perspective. The net result? Company’s actions are fragmented, Intelligence information is misguided, and resultant strategy is mishandled and not clearly embraced by the overall company.

As with any product or service function within a company, the (x)I functions should be similarly positioned. Individual product and service organizations do well with their own (x)I expertise and knowledge; who else would be better equipped to have an understanding on their business model and related attributes?! And Corporate-based (x)I leadership is, of course, essential for any company with this business need. The key is to provide a corporate climate where these individual product and service intelligence organizations can be interconnected amongst themselves while being co-aligned with the Corporate leadership (x)I team. It isn’t enough that information is shared, but rather that analytics are co-mingled, overlapping strategies are aligned, and a shared understanding of how the information is being utilized is realized – resulting in an overall matrix strategy that is truly company-based, and moreover, shared and understood amongst the employees.

Measure, Measure, Measure

One of the most important, and almost equally the most difficult notion within (x)I, is the acquisition of the RIGHT data to generate the RIGHT analysis to make the RIGHT decisions.

This article is not intended to focus on data acquisition and CI methodologies, but rather to focus on the ability to measure the OUTCOMES of a (x)I induced Corporate Strategy. Of course, this is not a short term, nor a one time “batch” sort of analysis. The process is fluid and ever-changing, requiring a constant monitoring and measuring that needs to be built into the infrastructure of the (x)I organization. The importance is the ability to understand how changes to the business environment will impact this strategy – updates to the competitive positioning, cross-spectrum of customer feedback, new technological innovations, disruptive business events, etc.   A truly integrated and aligned (x)I matrix organization should act essentially as an “early warning” system to predict outcomes to align business unit strategies, and better position the company to embrace these changes, all through the ability by constantly measuring the competitive climate.

Similarly, (x)I functions must be fluid enough to not only capture quickly-changing business disrupters in the market, but also to act upon and ultimately predict directions that competitors and industries will be heading. Constant market feedback, communication internally / externally with business partners and analysts will enable the Intelligence professional to quickly monitor and measure the impacts and provided ongoing guidance to the corporate strategy.

Intelligence professionals and the companies they work at are at a unique crossroad – the business climate of today (and tomorrow) is requiring a fundamental change in the way intelligence is collected and used. Organizations are subject to an every-increasing level of business disruptors that make it more and more challenging to effectively compete in the marketplace. Traditional CI behaviors are inadequate and quickly becoming outdated in serving the needs of companies looking to effectively compete in the 21st century. Recognizing these shortcomings is a first step towards implementing a truly integrated, (x)I-based intelligence organization that is all consuming, permeated throughout all aspects of an organization, and has to be aligned with the cultural DNA of the company in order for it to be a truly effective weapon in combating competitive pressures and addressing the needs of the future.

Article extracted from the “I am scip” magazine Vol. 2, Issue 3, August 2015.