Making Competitive Intelligence Louder than the Corporate Noise

At Primary Intelligence, we just finished working with a company that had very mature competitive intelligence processes in place. The processes provided information that should have helped maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Overall, the builders of the CI program put a lot of work into creating and refining processes that collected the right information.

And, their department just lost most of its funding. New initiatives won’t be added and it will be difficult to preserve much of the status quo. Smart people will soon be working with other companies.

Why?

Because, the CI department never really figured out how to make the results meaningful to the executives. Decisions were rarely influenced (let alone, based on) the results of their efforts.

And, that’s all she wrote. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there…

This is not a one-time occurrence. And, it is a way of life that is not limited to the Competitive Intelligence, Marketing Research or Marketing departments of the world. In fact, important people in mission-critical roles are dismissed regularly if the perception is that they are not producing results.

What is the take home lesson?

Be seen. Be heard. Be effective and make your presence known. Specifically, in relation to Competitive Intelligence:

1- Push information into the executive boardrooms as often as possible
2- Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask about the current questions that need to be answered for the company leadership
3- Study the way key decision-makers in the company find and read information. Do they prefer raw data, spreadsheets and crude analysis or will they only consume small, polished briefs, one chunk at a time
4- Be a consultant. Present intelligence options and drive the topic of competitive intelligence methods as an agenda item.
5- Be prepared to show case studies of related efforts showing ROI potential in competitive intelligence.

After all this, be prepared to do it over and over. If you want to stay above the noise in the corporation, you have to be a little better organized, targeted and unified than everything else. Otherwise, you will just be static.