Competitive intelligence: those who do not know you could end up
Competitive Intelligence is a systematic process of observation and collection of relevant information about the environment of the company, followed by their processing, analysis and dissemination into the decision-making. Depending on the object of his analysis Competitive Intelligence can have more focus on the market, competitors, customers, the economic, technological, regulatory, legal, etc.. In any case, the ultimate goal is to obtain information on which to base the company's shares. This is a key aspect that makes the Competitive Intelligence is not only a more or less passive, but a proactive activity that enables it to detect threats and opportunities to discover and act accordingly.
The sources of information to incorporate into the process of competitive intelligence are varied, ranging from patent databases to web pages of news, via analyst reports. The explosion of information generated by users that is occurring in the so-called Web 2.0 in the form of blogs, forums, wikis and social networks where they think about products and companies has increased the importance of this factor. This greater quantity and diversity of information sources relevant to the work of intelligence has led to the situation are known as "infotitation" and the need for sophisticated tools for collecting, processing and automated analysis of that information.
In innovative sectors, characterized by the emergence of new competitors and the aggressiveness of the current cycle of short product life, for technologies capable of disruption by lengthy and costly R & D projects for new laws that redefine entire industries etc.. Competitive Intelligence is even more important than in more stable or mature. For companies in these sectors have on their radar all that happens in their environment in relation to the movements of its competitors or its customers' needs is not optional but essential.
Has been related to Competitive Intelligence with other disciplines such as Business Intelligence (better known by his name in English for Business Intelligence) and Knowledge Management. It differs from them in the field of Competitive Intelligence is the environment of the organization, thrives on information sources of all kinds, mainly external and unstructured (free-form), and his approach is proactive and forward looking with the aim of identifying opportunities and threats. On the contrary, the Knowledge Management deals with the major asset of the company, with an emphasis on sharing and reuse of knowledge gained previously. For its part, Business Intelligence, but also to generate useful information for decision making, focuses almost exclusively on data internal to the organization and structure (e.g., data warehouse), so that techniques for treatment are very different.
One of the conclusions is a business network formed mainly by SMEs, while large companies have adopted the practice of competitive intelligence, the other organizations are far from being at the same level of adoption in other countries. The emergence of specialized companies that provide this service professionally and some support for its implementation by the government would address this problem.
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