Competitive Intelligence, Analytics and Your Job

Where can analytics benefit a company in its competitive intelligence program? Can the application of analytics to specific performance areas (vs. the competition) provide a competitive advantage? Such areas include:

• Supply Chain
• Loyalty
• Pricing
• Human Capital
• Product and Service Quality
• Financial Performance
• Research and Development

While many of these areas would seem to be analysis of internal processes, these same techniques can be applied to outside influences as well, including the competitive landscape.

And, nobody has to apologize for categorizing the refinement of internal processes as competitive intelligence. If a company can gain a bigger competitive advantage by studying itself rather than the competition, why wouldn’t you consider this method?


FUNCTION/DESCRIPTION/EXEMPLARS
Supply chain – Simulate and optimize supply chain flows; reduce inventory and stock-outs. (Dell, Wal-Mart, Amazon)

Customer selection, loyalty, and service – Identify customers with the greatest profit potential; increase likelihood that they will want the product or service offering; retain their loyalty. (Harrah’s, Capital One, Barclays

Pricing – Identify the price that will maximize yield, or profit. (Progressive, Marriott)

Human capital – Select the best employees for particular tasks or jobs, at particular compensation levels. (New England Patriots, Oakland A’s, Boston Red Sox)

Product and service quality – Detect quality problems early and minimize them. (Honda, Intel)

Financial performance – Better understand the drivers of financial performance and the effects of nonfinancial factors. (MCI, Verizon)

Research and development – Improve quality, efficacy and, where applicable, safety of products and services (Novartis, Amazon, Yahoo)

(Davenport, Thomas H. (2006), “Competing on Analytics”, Harvard Business Review, page 6)

Some competitive intelligence professionals are taking the lead in this area and expanding their skill set to include predictive analytics and advanced statistics. Others are still working on creating libraries of information and relying on gut feelings and intuition to provide direction to the company.

Watch for graduates to come out of school with advanced degrees in business analytics. They will be in very high demand in the near future. If you don’t understand these concepts, you may be working for a dinosaur. If your company isn’t a dinosaur, you may have to find a job working for one as the highly skilled analytics experts move in.

Sorry about the doom and gloom. But, that’s where I see things heading. I recommend moving ahead of the curve and adding some additional analytic training to your repertoire.

Of course, Primary Intelligence stands ready to put predictive analytics into your Win Loss and Account Loyalty programs right now. If you have a couple of minutes, give me a call and I’ll show you how. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)