Friday, September 7, 2007

The PI Competitive Intelligence Blog Saved You $8,000

Best Practices, LLC recently published a report called, “Building & Sustaining Impactful Competitive Intelligence Organizations.” This report is 132 pages and carries a price tag of $7995. I haven’t read the report. I probably won’t purchase it. But, if anyone has a copy they would loan me for some casual reading, I’d be very appreciative…

The key findings of the report are remarkably similar to information available from Primary Intelligence. For example:

· Best organizational fit: Organizational placement or “fit” of the CI function significantly impacts its ability to influence and engage decision makers. Strategic planning and business development are the locations most often cited by study participants as desirable departmental homes.

Primary Intelligence resources:

  • Blog: Creating Effective Intelligence, 4 part series starting here
  • Blog: The Wrong Way to do CI
  • Upcoming Webinar: Use Cross-functional Teams to Increase Intelligence Effectiveness (Click here to send an email for more info)


  • · Customer focus: High performing CI organizations operate within a framework that emphasizes customer focus to shape projects that have maximum impact. Top organizations target and serve critical customer segments that have the greatest impact on the business, personally engage with these customers to understand their business needs, and become instrumental in providing intelligence to inform their customers’ most important decisions. World class CI groups understand the specific needs of each customer and create custom deliverables to meet their individual requirements.

    Primary Intelligence resources:
  • Blog: Why Haven’t I Been the Target of CI?
  • Blog: It’s Not About the Price


  • · External customers: External customers are a rich source of competitive intelligence because they talk with competitors and receive competitor product pricing and features information on a continuous basis. Customers also use competitor products and can identify weaknesses in them. However, tapping into this rich resource is a challenge for most CI groups.

    Primary Intelligence resources:
  • Blog: VOC and CI
  • Blog: CI, Right Under Your Nose
  • Webinar: Using Your VOC Programs to Generate CI


  • I’m sure there was a lot of work put into the Best Practices report. Hopefully, those that purchase the report will act on the data and become more effective. But, visit some of our links above to find methods to put these concepts in practice, without having to spend $8,000.

    In the meantime, I’m going to rethink this “free blog content” concept. Would my thoughts be taken any more seriously if we charged $5000/year for them? I’ll let you know as soon as we put the e-commerce system in place. ( ^;

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