What the Mitchell Report and Competitive Intelligence Have in Common

Major League Baseball received the fruits of a $30M, 409 page report on the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Most would agree that the past 10-20 years have been a sad time for the integrity of the game. Hopefully, the game will be cleaner, and better, for having been through this level of scrutiny. Personally, I’m sure that all of this activity means more to some than others. I don’t know how yet to feel about the information about a game that I like (but probably don’t love) and I’m not sure I’ll spend enough time thinking about it to form an opinion.

But, I will say that the recommendations offered to major league baseball in the Mitchell Report have some applicability to Competitive Intelligence programs. The following recommendations come straight from the report and are detailed under “Recommendations on the Drug Program.”

The program should be independent

The program should be transparent

There should be adequate year-round drug testing

The program should be flexible enough to employ best practices as they develop

The program should continue to respect the legitimate rights of the players

The program should have adequate funding

Let’s look at those recommendations in a competitive intelligence light:

The program should be independent – This could be tough within a company. However, if the intelligence group is able to act with some degree of autonomy, there are increased chances that the information will be overtly biased. Consider using a 3rd-party to help balance the mix and insert objectivity

The program should be transparent – The best results are likely to come from a group that regularly informs others of their findings, actions and plans for the future. Do not run your competitive intelligence group like a mad scientist’s laboratory. Publish results. Present findings. Get the word out about your capabilities and future direction.

There should be year-round [efforts] – One-and-done research efforts often provide a shot of information but don’t provide context to track results or changes in the marketplace over time. Create some consistency in your efforts and don’t sacrifice stable programs for “flavor of the day” projects.

The program should be flexible enough to employ best practices as they develop – Learning, education, and willingness to improve will help competitive intelligence programs inch forward in progress.

The program should continue to respect the legitimate rights of the players – Be above board with everyone inside your company and out. Do not sneak around. Do not look for the covert. Do not sacrifice integrity and ethics. You can find out almost everything you need to know without violating the law. If you have to dabble in the illegal to compete, you have bigger problems in your business than your competitive intelligence efforts can fix. Just say “no” to espionage.

The program should have adequate funding – Amen. Someone inside of your department is going to have to sell the results of your efforts. Even if your findings are consistently recognized as good, you still have to battle for budget to make sure that funding doesn’t slowly diminish.

Consider the soundness of these recommendations and act. If you follow these basic precepts, you’re likely to keep your organization moving smoothly with little need for earthshaking actions from ownership.

Most importantly, and for the record Mr. Mitchell, this blog is 100% steroid free.

Effective Competitive Intelligence – Don’t Let Indecision Derail You

No matter how you practice competitive intelligence, you have to be concerned with the fact that your CI program must be effective in your business. Much emphasis has been put on various programs in the company and their “effectiveness.” To me “effective” is a relative term. There are so many levels of effectiveness that almost anything can be graded as effective. The real talent and wisdom are manifest in one’s ability to differentiate between lower and higher levels.

So, what are the effectiveness qualifiers for competitive intelligence? I’ll stick with a definition put forth earlier in this same blog (which was also a topic in our recent webinar which can be downloaded HERE). The mission of effective Competitive Intelligence should be to:

– Strengthen your company’s position
• How is our value proposition perceived?
• What is the competition doing?
• Which industry-wide best practices will truly apply?
– Discover new markets
• What is possible with new technologies?
• Where should we steer the company?
– Develop new products/services/solutions
• What problems do our clients experience that we can address?

Indecision
There are so many obstacles to producing effective intelligence. The first of these obstacles is indecision. This indecision devalues intelligence efforts and, in some cases, leads to the dissolution of the actual intelligence efforts.

What is the real problem with indecision? It’s the fact that nobody can agree on what should be studied or what results should come of the efforts. Often, executives will request specific bits of information while other departments create laundry lists of potential topics.



In way too many cases, a strategic plan for intelligence is lacking. Evidence of this environment usually rears its head with the philosophy of “Let’s grab everything we can” and “Once we have the intelligence, we’ll know what to do with it.” The most dangerous symptom is a company that is very reactive in its intelligence efforts. “What just happened?!?! Go find out what [competitor x] is doing!”

The truth of the matter is that this lack of system usually leads to way too much information which can not be prioritized. The abundance of information leads to overload and blindness. The end result is that the intelligence is used less and less until the prevailing feeling is that the intelligence is not useful after all. From this point on, corporate decisions will not be based on the intelligence efforts, but on experience and such.

Without a competitive intelligence strategy that makes effectiveness a strong characteristic of success, the intelligence group is likely to marginalize its own value.

Recommendation
So, the recommendation is that you have to make your company be decisive about its intelligence efforts. Develop a set of effectiveness criteria or use those that I included above. Measure your strategy against its ability to be effective. And, be enough of a salesperson to sell this idea to your management and on up the chain.

Create a habit of decisiveness around your intelligence efforts, strategies and plans. Otherwise, indecision will trivialize your best efforts.

Thoughts? Leave me a comment or we can chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

What are the top challenges with regards to Competitive Intelligence?

Recently, I saw a LinkedIn question that asked,

What are the top challenges with regards to competitive intelligence in Pharma at the moment?
I'm putting together a Pharma industry conference on the subject and would like to hear what's hot in the area at the moment.

My answer, which I presented in form of a letter, explains how important ROI and visibility have become. It wasn’t long ago that the topics were ethics and espionage (and those topics still get mileage), but thought leaders (individual and organizational) seem to be thinking more about effectiveness than methods.

The response is included below:

Ms. Ojewale,

I'm more of a CI practitioner than Pharma industry expert. That said, I believe that many of the challenges in your industry are typical of many others.

One of the problems inherent in CI is trying to make sure that the information you obtain will be used effectively to drive change that:

1. Strengthens a competitive position with an existing product
2. Finds new markets or uses for a product
3. Helps create new products that meet an unforeseen need.

In other words, if CI isn’t producing revenue or leading to the revenue path, it may not be as worthwhile as you might think.

The second problem is trying to convince change agents (senior management) that the intelligence should be used to create business change. This is a widespread problem that causes companies to under-leverage their CI efforts. Too often, the intelligence is judged as trivial. If the intelligence confirms something that the executive already knows, the information is devalued. If the intelligence shows something unexpected, too often, it is dismissed due to the fact that someone in an executive office knows better than a CI analyst.

To understand the significance of this problem, you’ll note that the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) hosted a conference earlier this month for CI professionals. The topics they intend to cover do not address any of the “how to gather CI issues.” Instead, their list of topics focuses on making CI relevant, getting CI noticed and meshing with upper management’s needs.

· Allocating resources
· Strategic internal positioning of CI
· Understanding and meeting upper management needs
· Hiring and retaining CI talent
· Ensuring success: Promoting your department
· Establishing measurable objectives (ROI)
· Vehicles for communicating CI

(For more information: http://members.scip.org/scriptcontent/BeWeb/events/eventdetail.cfm?&PRODUCT_MAJOR=BPFORUM907)

These ideas seem to encompass much of what is being discussed in the professional CI ranks. Thought leaders are leaning toward the topics of relevance, effectiveness, ROI, etc…

This Thursday, Primary Intelligence will host a webinar based on making sure that Competitive Intelligence makes a difference. If you would like to attend a no-cost webinar on Thursday, 9/27 at 2pm ET, register HERE.

Secret of Strategy, Competitive Intelligence Style (Part 2 of 2)

Last post, I provided the first in a 2-part series on strategic thinking and preparation. It is my assertion that Competitive Intelligence is too often used for tactical purposes only (sales and marketing) and is not featured in the boardroom for critical decision-making as often as it should be.

While this may not be the case in your company, you should still evaluate how often executives turn to your competitive intelligence programs. Even better, have the executives had a hand in designing the intelligence initiatives? If your executive team has helped create the intelligence programs, odds are good that they are invested in the program. Otherwise, you risk being relegated to the “nice to have” category; at least, from the strategic level.

And, if your company does not use competitive intelligence for strategic decision-making, what can you do to increase the visibility and usefulness of your intelligence initiatives in the boardroom? My first recommendation is to make sure that you personally are thinking strategically. Evaluate your intelligence programs and determine if your current information meets the strategic needs of the company. If your information is too tactical in nature, at best, it will be interesting but worthless at the highest levels.

Without further ado, I’ll let Mr. Lemberg finish his thoughts on Strategic Thinking:

Secret of Strategy - Part 2
Of course you've heard that when you do what you've always done, you'll likely get what you've always got. In this case that means playing the tactical game: coming up with acceptable--or worse--comfortable options and executing them as time permits. Likely, what you'll get is business as usual, and things will be... well, they'll be fine.

But "fine" may not be what you're after, and you are probably reading a series called "How to Create Strategies That Work" so you can do better--perhaps much better...

And if you are willing to take some time and do your homework: the research, inquiry, analysis, synthesis, and the activation of strategy--you can add dramatically more power to each one of your individual tactics, and potentially revolutionize your entire business.

In the beginning of this series I showed you how to start the process of selecting a market-dominating business and marketing strategy.

The first four steps are:
• Set your vision
• Gather environmental and competitive intelligence
• Take stock of your organization's strengths and weaknesses
• Answer the Global Strategy Question

I covered those in The Secrets of Strategy, Part 1. In this article I'm going to cover the next four steps:

• Establish decisive objectives
• Rate and rank your "SWOTs"
• Match your internal and external factors to identify strategic alternatives
• Select the highest-impact strategies for implementation

Establish Decisive Objectives
Strategy is contextual. This means you should not make any kind of strategic decision--choosing strategy A over Strategy B, for instance--without first setting a context with Decisive Objectives.

The word decisive is from the Latin decidere, which means to cut off. Decisive objectives are the goals that cut off irrelevant business opportunities and distracting details. They define the boundaries of your company's efforts and direction, and establish the measures by which you will gauge your success.

This step is to select company-defining goals, the attainment of which will mean your vision has started to become a reality. These objectives or goals should relate to the following:

• In what markets will you do business?
• What market share will you have? Will you be a marginal player with a small percentage, a big player with a significant portion of the market, or will you dominate your market and crush all competition?
• Where will you operate geographically? This question ties back to the issue of market share; you might dominate the market locally but be a small player nationally.
• How much revenue and profit will you earn? Larger revenue goals will have different strategic needs.
• What impact will your business have on your industry, your community, your world?
• How will you exit your business? Will you run the business and eventually pass it on to family members? Will you sell it privately? Will you go public?

These are examples of the kinds of goals which shape your company. The decisive objectives create the context for the strategy alternatives you generate.

Rate and rank your "SWOTs"

Previously, you analyzed your external environment and internal strengths and weaknesses. Now rate and rank the most important factors.

Evaluate each external factor: is it an opportunity to be taken advantage of, a threat to be defended against, or is simply something neutral you can safely ignore? Do the same for your internal factors: are they strengths to capitalize upon, weaknesses which much be bolstered or outsourced, or neutral conditions?

Using your Decisive Objectives as a guide, select amongst the potential opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses, those factors you consider critical to the success of your business. (Ignore the neutral factors.)

Group the critical factors into internal and external. Rate each internal factor from .01 to .99 based on its perceived importance to your business. The total should add up to 1.0. Do the same for the external factors.

Select the top five to ten internal factors and external factors for matching.

Match your internal and external factors to identify strategic alternatives

Matching combines each internal factor with an external factor, generating a potentially relevant strategy. A software manufacturer might match an internal strength such as flexibility with an external opportunity of a new law in a related industry, yielding a strategic alternative to reconfigure the software and provide solutions to the new legal requirements.

Or, a duck farmer might match his internal strength of breeding expertise with an external opportunity demanding low-fat, high-protein foods to yield a strategy selling low- fat duck.
Strengths are matched with opportunities to create SO strategies. These are generally your strongest, highest leverage options. Strengths match with threats to create ST strategies. These use your natural assets to minimize external threats to existing revenue streams and your current competitive position. But since the best defense is often a strong offense, you may find yourself reverting to an SO strategy-- typically a better alternative.

WO strategies use external opportunities to reduce the impact of internal weaknesses. Of course, you may simply choose to put your resources into areas of strength and outsource weak factors.

WT strategies are the weakest of all: defensive approaches designed to minimize internal weaknesses or external threats. Sometimes necessary to protect weakening revenue streams, there are often other, more powerful approaches that take better advantage of company strengths.

This process is often called SWOT, named for the four types of internal and external factors. I prefer to call it SOT, since the most powerful options will not pay much attention to weaknesses. In our business philosophy you will gain more ground more quickly by amplifying and exploiting your strengths and outsourcing--or ignoring--the areas in which you are weak.

Select specific strategies for implementation

At this point many people choose to intuitively select which strategies to pursue. Others may prefer to bring rigor to the ranking process. This final step combines your various subjective analyses into a defined framework, giving each strategy a strategic impact score.

Compare your new strategic alternatives to your list of critical factors to find those factors affected by each strategy. For each match, rank the attractiveness of the strategy relative to the factor from 1-4 (1--not attractive, 2--somewhat attractive, 3--reasonably attractive, 4--highly attractive) and multiply it by the factor's rating (.01 - .99). Sum all the scores for that strategy into a total "strategic impact score."

Lastly, select your go-forward strategies based on the highest strategic impact scores.

This is a demanding process with many steps, but it is well worth the effort. The strategies you create will take greatest of advantage of your strengths and opportunities, while protecting your company most effectively against threats and weaknesses. They will provide your company with leverage to make the most of your assets, your competitive position and your markets, all while insuring your strategies are consistent with your company's vision and goals.

Important notice for strategy-minded entrepreneurs:
Strategy creation is a long road to hoe, and goes much more smoothly when you know what questions to ask and in what sequence. To make it easier for you and your senior team, I've created the Growth Strategy Roadmap.

This program of flowcharts, questions, checklists, and detailed processes takes you through the entire progression of evaluating your external and internal environments, and provides all the steps and forms necessary to generate matched options, and rate, rank and select a high-leverage, high-growth strategy.

© Copyright 2004 Quantum Growth Coaching. All Rights Reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paul Lemberg's clients call him "the unreasonable business coach" because he insists they pursue goals and take actions far outside their comfort zone to make more money than they previously thought possible. To get business coaching, tips, tools and strategies like these, visit http://www.paullemberg.com/execoach.html.

Increasing ROI from Competitive Intelligence Efforts

If you have a CI program, take a minute to measure the ROI of your efforts. Instead of simply building a large library of information, ask yourself the following questions:

• Top-line Revenue
– Will this intelligence create new revenue opportunities?
– Will we take away sales from the competition?
– Will our existing accounts stay longer and be more profitable?
• Bottom-line
– Can we be more efficient or learn best practices?
– Are there better ways to manage our processes?
• Application
– How easily will we be able to act on these data?

If you are able to identify areas where you are directly increase top or bottom-line revenue, you are one of the rare success stories in competitive intelligence. If you are like the majority, you may want to consider some of the following tips:

• Reactive CI does not constitute a program. Develop an intelligence program that helps sales, marketing and product development informed of the competition's movements in the most strategic areas. Ignore all of the other noise.
• Information becomes “must have” when executives depend on it to move forward. Understand the willingness of your executives to use intelligence to make decisions. Determine which types of intelligence are best received. Don't spend time developing programs that produce data that won't be used.
• Do not assume that “stacks of information” are better than smaller quantities of targeted intelligence. Busy work does not equal effectiveness.
• Determine WHAT to investigate before starting a search. If you don't have a goal in mind, you will end up on wild goose chases. Everything begins to look appealing if you don't know what you're after.

Use these tips to work with your manager and executives to create a program rather than a competitive intelligence library.

Webinar - Competitive Intelligence with ROI

Last week, Primary Intelligence hosted a one-hour webinar demonstrating the benefits of approaching competitive intelligence with the goal of demonstrating predictable ROI. By far, it was our most successful online seminar session and the feedback indicates a strong need for better processes and criteria to shape business intelligence efforts.

(The presentation is available here)

While the presentation was well received, the Q&A session was a confirmation of the fact that business leaders and intelligence providers want more consistent processes and better criteria. CI Professionals want a plan that will make a difference.

Too often, the CI generated in a company is reactionary. Someone suddenly wants to know "Why we lost that account" or "When [competitor] moved into our space on the east cost."

While these are real business problems, the questions are reactionary, at best. CI efforts will bog down and die if they only answer these types of questions. And if management can't see that your efforts are making a difference, you'll probably be working for another company soon.

Day-to-day CI has to be guided by a strategic vision. Execution must be timely and people have to be nimble enough to change direction as the landscape shifts. But, there has to be a vision.

Who sets that vision? Give that idea some thought.

If you would like to talk more about the idea of CI with ROI, call me at 801-838-9600 x5050 or cdalley@primary-intel.com. Let's chat.