As the world becomes more competitive and as organisations have adopted globalization, its crucial to be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses more so of your competitor to stay ahead. Organizations who have a sound strategy to stay ahead at all times must have a well-performing radar system in order to analyse their competitors and market developments/movements, market trends,etc and to be able to identify relevant opportunities or threats on time.Competitive Intelligence is the art of always staying one step ahead of the competition.Competitive Intelligence (CI) is both a process and a product. The process of collecting, storing and analyzing information about the competitive arena results in the actionable output of intelligence ascertained by the needs prescribed by an organization.
Competitive Intelligence is the action of gathering, analyzing, and applying information about products, domain constituents, customers, and competitors for the short term and long term planning needs of an organization.CI involves Planning, Data Collection, Analysis, Communication, decision and feedback
The Ten CI Commandments
- Management must support and stay behind CI and act as a mentor
- Keep it Simple and Smart
- Search for what already exists. First discover and then invent or Re-invent
- Store all content on a central repository for use or reuse latter
- Start from scratch and quickly bring out the good results
- First be pragmatic in approach and then boost the strategic components
- Get involved with Field from day one
- Define our clear competencies/ responsibilities
- Communicate
- Feedback
