Competitive intelligence (CI) is a renowned practice that helps companies strategically by increasing their performance and analyzing all aspects that can influence and affect business results allowing for better decisions.
One of the most used and known definitions of CI provided by the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) community is:
“Competitive Intelligence is a process that enables organizations to reduce strategic risk and increase revenue opportunities by having a deep understanding of what has happened, what is happening, and what may happen in their operating environment.”
A remarkable differential of competitive organizations is their ability to process data, information, and knowledge quickly, clearly, concisely, and accurately, in the strategic decision-making, actions, and innovation processes. Also, companies that implement a competitive intelligence practice have a better understanding of the competitive scenario, and by moving toward a wise strategy, they can develop programs to increase their competitive advantage.
About the CI process
The Intelligence Cycle is an iterative process that controls the scope and pace of the overall production of competitive intelligence. It has five main steps: planning and direction, collection or gathering of data and information, data processing and information, analysis and producing meaningful intelligence, and dissemination and feedback.
Step 1 — Planning and direction
The beginning of the cycle. For this stage to succeed, it is necessary to involve all the key stakeholders to define project objectives and understand how to execute the plan. In this step, it is essential to have interactions between who will produce material and who will consume the material, trying to get expectations as aligned as possible.
Step 2 — Collection or gathering of data and information
The goals defined in the first part guide this step of the intelligence cycle. The collection phase determines where and how to conduct data acquisition and information gathering. Since most sources reach a high volume of information, it is crucial to use the right tools, methodology, and expertise to achieve feasible operations.
Step 3 — Processing of data and information
The third step involves the collation, validation, and evaluation of the gathered data and information to confirm its usefulness and relevance. Analogous to the last step, tools & methodology plays an essential role in this phase since the high volume of data and information needs to be partially automated to make the process successful.
Step 4 — Analyze and produce meaningful intelligence
Through evaluation, analysis, and interpretation, it is possible to produce finished intelligence contextualized in an easy format that answers the requirements and facilitates the decision-making process.
Step 5 — Dissemination and feedback
The last step, which logically feeds into the first, is the distribution of the finished intelligence.
It is important to notice that this is a continuous process. As a closed-loop system, the intelligence cycle ends when the originator of the request provides feedback as to the value of the process. The learnings from the previous cycle adjust to the next competitive intelligence cycle.
Introducing Grund: Technology Competitive Intelligence
The Intelligence Cycle can be applied to several spheres with a different focus, such as Technology. Grund creates value through the gathering and analysis of information to support the decision-making in the Technology Competitive Intelligence process. We help customers to get insights from a large volume of technical and market data with solutions that aim to bring in knowledge from outside the company to better answer complex questions related to the innovation process.
Grund combines the best of Data Science and Analytics, Market Intelligence, Technology, and Engineering Skills.
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