Slight Changes

Hello, everyone. This is Mark Larson at Primary Intelligence wishing all of you a happy and productive day. I just wanted to update you on some changes that will be happening with the blog.

Chris Dalley has taken a new position here within our company and has passed the opportunity of managing this blog onto me. Chris is a more prolific writer than I, so I will be enlisting the help of my PI colleagues to continuously bring new and interesting content to these pages.

We hope to give you tidbits on the Competitive Intelligence community in general as well as exciting new developments we uncover while doing our own research.

A lot has changed in the intelligence and market research fields over the past 10 years in which we've been in business. Technology is playing a bigger role as companies want easier access to data as well as better targeted findings.

We hope to keep the information rolling that helps you in your understanding of what is available and what is on the horizon in regards to CI.

We also would love your comments as well. If you have an interesting viewpoint on a topic, or information that would be enlightening, send it to me and we'll look at posting it.

Contact me at mlarson@primary-intel.com or by phone at 801-838-9600 x5046.

Where are the Innovators in Competitive Intelligence?

So, I receive a daily alert on various competitive intelligence topics through Google’s Blog alert service. You probably track any number of topics (including the competition) by the same means (either in news, blog or regular search alerts). I like to track the “chatter” of the competitive intelligence community. I’ll also admit that I’m a little vain. I like to make sure that my blog entries make it into the top 5 each day. It took a while and a lot of consistent work to gain Google credibility, but we’re pretty visible now.

Everyday for the past year, I have received an email with at least 5 competitive intelligence topics which were generated that day. Occasionally, a rare treat will present itself in the form of a bit of information that makes me think. Mostly, I see article after article (day after day) about how the internet makes competitive intelligence possible for companies. Specifically, you should look at your competitor’s website and grab all of the information you can.

There is nothing wrong with this advice. Many competitive intelligence initiatives begin at that very spot. But, I’m a little bit surprised at how consistently some of the simplest techniques appear at the top of the searches each day.

If it isn’t “Watch your competitor’s web page,” it’s “Do a patent search.” Again, good advice, but I’m still surprised at how many people seem to come up with that idea each day and profess the practice as the next big development in competitive intelligence.

And, the whole web analytics field believes that they have reinvented the competitive intelligence field, simply by tracking Alexa traffic ratings. I’ll bet I see a couple of blog posts about that every week.

I sure do wish that the innovators in Competitive Intelligence were publishing more thoughts and creating more dialogue in the blog community. Of course, SCIP does their part to produce articles and thought leadership, but too few practitioners are participating in the blog world.

I will recommend a few of the blogs that I enjoy. Some of them are published more often than others, but they all come from very intelligent people who have a track record of sharing valuable insight.

Jon Lowder (SCIP)

Arthur Weiss (UK)

Adrian Alvarez (Latin America)

Dan McHugh (Seems to have disappeared in the fall, but his stuff was good)

CI Podcast – August J. Jackson

Fuld

EastSight Consulting

I know I’m missing a ton. Hopefully, you’ll help fill in the blanks with your comments. And, I have included some of our competitors. In fact, I am happy to include them. There are some smart people out there and their thoughts should be promoted above the din.

These people are developing new ideas and sharing them with the CI community. These are the people that will move the industry forward. And, I sure do wish that their intelligence, creativity and insight would drown out some of the drivel that currently exists.

Hopefully, my thoughts, expressed on behalf of Primary Intelligence, have provides some level of quality or inspiration. There are so many topics that need to be covered in competitive intelligence. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about key issues and less about the “new technique” of surfing your competitors’ websites.

Primary Intelligence Newsletter - Living Inside the Prospect's Head

The newsletter is out again. We would enjoy feedback. If you want to subscribe, simply use the subscription option on the individual article pages (accessed by clicking on each of the links below)

Cover Story
Experts Corner: Living Inside the Prospect's Head
By Glen Remy, Primary Intelligence Inc.
Memo to sales: Company X is strongly in the market for our product. Their current contract with Competitor Y will expire in four months and they are highly likely to evaluate alternate programs. Their biggest unmet needs are integration with current programs, individual configurability... (For more, click here)

BlogCentral
Competitive Intelligence and Too Much Data!
In a recent study by Advertising Age, middle managers aired their opinions about the effectiveness of Competitive Intelligence and identified specific problems that cause intelligence in general to be ignored. (For more, click here)

The A-List Archive
3rd-party Review of Keane's Sale into Alliance Hospital
Originally Published in December 2004.Alliance Hospital, a small, physician-run facility in Odessa, Texas, needed to replace its inadequate information and billing system. Because the hospital was losing revenue, and because it did not have a large IT staff, Alliance sought a solution that would meet its needs while still being quick and easy to implement.(For more, click here)

Primary Intelligence Newsletter Launches!

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Yesterday, we launched the Primary Intelligence Weekly Newsletter, which was a very big deal for our company. A number of events came together lately to encourage us to share our ideas and the newsletter seems to be the best tool for our purposes.

Our newsletter will be dedicated to the promotion of sales and competitive intelligence. If you have spent any time reading this blog, you'll know that we lean heavily toward intelligence that is most likely to provide ROI. We will discuss current topics, provide case studies and bring you techniques that are likely to help your company move ahead of the competitors. In brief we will:

• Promote competitive intelligence
• Create a forum of likeminded people
• Solicit viewpoints from practitioners and academics

If you would like to be added to our subscription list, send me an email and I'll make sure you are added for the next edition (cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Take a look at the stories from our first edition:

Cover Story

Million Dollar Competitive Intelligence for Pennies a Day

By Ron Sathoff, Primary Intelligence Inc.

My Dad always used to say, "Leveraging all that you already have in an efficient way can bring about unexpected benefits." Of course, he phrased it as "Make the most of what you have," or "No, you can't have any more money," but the sentiment is similar. Enhancing your Competitive Intelligence does not mean you have to launch a whole new set of research initiatives. (For more, click here)

BlogCentral

It Really Isn't About Price

Recently, we interviewed a lost sales opportunity for one of our vision care providers. They had battled it out with two other providers and in the end, they weren't selected, but it wasn't about price. (For more, click here)

The Big Deal

The A-List: 7-Eleven Selects HP Technology

7-Eleven needed to upgrade the information technology that it had in its stores to provide them with the data they needed to run their systems faster. After sending out RFPs to several companies, 7-Eleven narrowed its short list to two alternatives: a Hewlett-Packard solution, and a combined solution from NEC and NCR, with NEC providing the hardware and NCR providing the service for the solution. (For more, click here)

If you have feedback or comments, let me know. I am interested to know what you think about our publication. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Dan McHugh – A Pretty Smart Guy who likes Competitive Intelligence

I was flattered this week to find a kind mention about Primary Intelligence in an associate’s blog. Mr. McHugh enjoyed some of my thoughts about attaching ROI and results to your competitive intelligence efforts. (click HERE to visit Dan's blog)

Dan McHugh started his blog a couple of weeks ago. In his first post, he provided a preview of what to expect from his writings:

What to expect:

• Advice and insights for “Lone Wolf” CI practitioners as well as those setting up thier own CI/Market Intelligence practices.
• Thoughts on the use and misuse of CI by Technology companies.
• CI in Asia Pacific and some of the unique pitfalls and benefits.
• A bit of irreverence and the continuing battle between sales and marketing.

What not to expect:

• Commentary on the competitors I focus on for my day-to-day job. Not that I don’t like being opinionated regarding them, but rather, I want this blog to be about the art of CI. I also greatly admire the work that many of my brethren do, regardless of the company they work for.

In my opinion, this type of information would be of benefit to any practitioner of Competitive Intelligence. Best wishes to Dan in building a readership. So far, his content is worthy of my time.

I don’t know how to personally contact Dan, but I believe that he is the Senior Manager, Competitive Intelligence – APAC at Oracle. Hopefully, I’ll have lunch with him someday.

If you enjoy reading blogs and articles on market, competitive and sales intelligence, do the author a favor and leave a comment. Agree with the article. Offer a contradictory opinion. Promote your own work and point of view. Half of the fun of blogging is receiving feedback and knowing that you have created a dialogue rather than a monologue.

And, just when you thought statistics were boring…
One last thing from Dan’s blog. Today, he posted the following:

Aaron Koblin looks at 15,000 flights that flew in and out of the USA over a period of 24 hours. You would think that would be pretty much the end of the story. Click to see just how exciting statistics can get!

I’m always happy to chat about competitive intelligence (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)