Why is Competitive Intelligence Not Effective?
Competitive Intelligence. Everyone is doing it. You should too. (Of course, you already do)
You have a CI department. So do your competitors. So does everyone else. The question really is whether your intelligence efforts are effective at strengthening your competitive position, discovering new markets or developing your product/service/solution.
In short, does your company make changes to increase revenues and profitability based on your intelligence efforts?
Based on our experience, if you are like most companies, the effect of your intelligence efforts are minimized and, often, substantially. Why? There are five primary reasons that intelligence is not leveraged to its maximum potential:
- Indecision
- Delays and Timeliness
- Misunderstanding Other’s Worlds
- Communication Problems
- Lack of Acceptance
Most of the time, these reasons apply mostly to the executive level of your company. If the change agents in your company are not committed to using intelligence as a road map or do not find your intelligence relevant, they will continue to make decisions based on intuition and whatever information they find helpful.
Overcoming these challenges takes effort, evangelization and commitment. Habits are not easily replaced.
For more information on increasing the effectiveness of your intelligence efforts, let’s chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)
1 comment:
Good post.
In fact I think that there is another reason why CI is often not seen as effective. Consider the following scenario:
The CI team are doing a fantastic job, getting good intelligence to all who need it. This intelligence is acted on, and the company succeeds as a result. The question is: who gets the credit for the success? Is it the CI professional or the decision maker? I believe that often (usually?) it will be the decision maker who is praised for their insight and wisdom, rather than the CI analyst who gave them the wherewithal to make the decision. So CI is not really valued in the company - and may even be seen as a wasteful overhead, if the decision makers who use it don't realize or admit to themselves that their brilliance is because of the great CI they receive.
Now consider that a mistake is made - based on poor intelligence. The decision maker will not want to take the credit, and instead will seek a scapegoat to blame. Guess who? So in the second case, the CI department gets blamed for the failure, whereas in the 1st case they don't get the credit for the success.
Does this sound like your company? If it does, you know what you need to do: blow your own trumpet! So a 6th reason why CI is not effective is that the CI team fail to communicate what they contribute. I guess this could come under "communication problems" but I think that it is in fact so important that it should really be seen in a class of its own.
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