In todaya’s world, it is necessary to know where and with whom you are competing against, how to direct the company’s path, and maintain your competitive advantage. One of the most effective methods to collect this information is through commercial intelligence or competitive intelligence. In this section, we will explore this topic and its applications.
What is Competitive Intelligencea?
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the act of determining, gathering, analyzing, and sharing knowledge about products, customers, competitors, and any aspect of the conditions required to sustain executives and managers in strategic decision making for an organization. This process expands a business competitiveness in the market since it provides knowledge of our competitors abilities and our clients needs. Furthermore, it facilitates decision making, supports strategic planning and the corresponding marketing strategies.
Its Objectives:
Competitive intelligence has four main goals:
- Develop competitive positioning and, consequently, a company’s profitability.
- Support company’s decision making in tactical actions as well as in long term strategies.
- Establish early-warning mechanisms for market changes, enabling companies to act instead of reacting.
- Identify market trends.
- Research Development and Innovation (R+D +i) Objectives:
- Choose
- Right areas to focus on
- Detect the latest inventions on-time.
- Decide what RD projects can be sourced out (not invented here) and multiplying RD capacity
The competitive intelligence system is imprescriptible and methodical by nature. Therefore, we suggest that the person in charge of it needs to have access to adequate resources and given support, being able to regulate the analysis of the key information, as well as bringing the reports and the information to the decision makers.
