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| Of the hundreds of managers I've worked with in my career, Tom has to rank in the top 1%. He has everything you could want in a manager, a consultant, or a person. |
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Competitive Intelligence Applications Survey Results |
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In March of 2010, I conducted
a survey of competitive
intelligence and strategy
professionals from sixteen organizations
about competitive intelligence. The goal of
the survey was to understand
specific
competitive intelligence challenges
faced by practitioners and
illuminate approaches used to
overcome those challenges. The survey can be
downloaded
here. |
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The survey consisted of five
questions. (The results are
presented following the
questions.)
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How well do you think that
your CI customers or clients
understand the definition
and value of competitive
intelligence?
-
Which statement best
describes your success in
describing competitive
intelligence to prospective
customers or clients?
-
How well does your
organization assemble and
market competitive
intelligence success
stories?
-
Which of the following
development steps do you
regularly take to improve
your competitive
intelligence skills?
-
Which skills, if
substantially improved,
would have the greatest
impact on your competitive
intelligence success? I
would like to be better at …
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Notes:
The answers to this question
illustrate a fundamental problem
for competitive intelligence and
the people that practice CI.
More than two thirds of the
customers/clients have no better
than an average understanding of
CI. One implication from this is
that many potential engagements
have to start with a basic
education about competitive
intelligence.
This is a high bar during poor
economic times since other well
understood topics may be more
important to managers. |
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Notes:
The previous question focused on
the starting understanding about
CI. Observe that most
practitiioners reported success
once they were talking to
potential clients and customers.
They key seems to be getting
into a problem solving meeting
and then illustrating how CI can
help. Fifty percent of the
respondents reported success
when they were involved in
issue-discovery meetings.
About a quarter of the
respondents reported little
success while another quarter
reported regular success.
There is a significant
opportunity to learn from those
that have experienced regular
success. |
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Notes:
These responses show another
recurring problem for
competitive intelligence
professionals. While a quarter
of the respondents have a rich
set of success stories, the
other 75% do not. These
responses correlate well with
the responses to the first
question and again illustrate
why many clients/customers
struggle to understand
competitive intelligence.
From a practitioner perspective,
the lack of stories handicaps
the effective adoption and
execution of competitive
intelligence in an organization. |
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Notes:
Since this survey was publicized
solely through online
communities, it is not
surprising that a large
percentage of respondents report
using online tools to develop
their skills.
The surprising results are in
the bottom categories. Except
for the "too busy to improve"
responses, the other categories
involve face-to-face
interactions. Apparently,
relatively few CI professionals
use these tools for improvement.
Stunningly, only 6% of the
respondents ask their
clients/customers how they might
improve their skills. This would
be a devastating omission when
trying to assess any type of
qualitative ROI for competitive
intelligence. |
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Notes:
The respondents cited business
development skills (i.e.,
getting customers and sponsors)
as the most useful skills to
improve. Again, this is
consistent with the responses to
question 2.
Note that most of the skills to
improve deal with the beginning
of a CI project versus the
execution or conclusion of the
project. Most of the important
skills for execution, reporting
and follow-up garnered 25-30%
responses. |
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