15 Q&A about Competitive Intelligence (CI)
1. What is CI?
It is a management tool whose function is to help the managers in fulfilling the mission of their organizations, by analyzing the information on their business and its environment. From the point of view of information management, CI retrieves, organizes and analyzes data and information, and delivers the results to the appropriate people in the organization. This provides the managers, in a systematic and organized way, relevant knowledge about the external environment and internal conditions of the organization for decision-making as well as for tactical and strategic guidance. Based on the analysis, CI anticipates trends in market and technology. It uses databases, networks, newspapers, archival information, interviews, software tools and everything needed to capture, organize, evaluate, and analyze information to arrive to conclusions and present proposals to managers.
2. Why is CI important?
Because the pace of technological development and social, political and economic changes in the world, in the midst of globalization and information explosion, make that entrepreneurs cannot rely only on instinct, on the nearest information and on their advisors knowledge to make decisions. Ignorance is expensive.
3. Is CI a form of espionage?
No. That’s a common misconception. CI is a tool for decision making that is based on obtaining information ethically and legally, mostly from public sources or private sources, with proper authorization.
4. What kind of information does CI need?
Companies are engaged in a socio-economic environment depending on their location and on the set of international relations. Also depend on technological development. That’s the external circuit of the information environment of firms. Closer to companies are customers, suppliers, actual and potential competitors, regulatory agencies, distributors and financial firms. The company needs information on all these elements to interact with them. With these elements, the company incorporates or discards technology lines, prepares to face a new legislation, invests in new markets, incorporates improvements or rejects a line of products or services and makes many other similar decisions, of tactical or strategic value.
5. What is the relationship of information science, computer science and management science with CI?
They are close and mutually influential. CI depends on information science, regarding methods, systems and services. It also requires information technology tools. At the same time, management science uses CI.
6. Is CI an automated information system?
No. It is a working system, a method, but it works much better when makes use of automated information systems.
7. What is the relationship between information management and CI?
It is a mother-child relationship. CI systems cannot exist if information management in the organization is not established previously. But there may be an information management system in a company, where CI is not practiced or where CI services are outsourced.
8. What is a CI network?
It is the network formed by: a) those that capture the information and their information sources, b) the experts that organize and analyze the information, c) the decision makers and their advisors; and d) the communication channels between them.
9. Should the CI system be centralized?
Not necessarily. It works best when it is decentralized, but coordinated. It is ideal when CI is located at a sufficiently high level in the company as to support any activity, without internal borders but under the managers’ control.
10. What role do databases and Internet have in CI?
It is a vital role. Without external databases, organizations can not know the development of other businesses, the advancement of technologies and many other necessary issues. Without Internet, this will be more difficult and sometimes more dilated. But companies also need information that is not necessarily obtained by these means. For example, the local labor market, interviews with customers and suppliers, and many other elements.
11. Is CI only applicable in large companies? Is it only for companies?
No, to both questions. Medium and small companies may also employ this tool, according to their resources and mission. These companies may not have the resources to implement their own CI systems, but they can turn to specialized services, either directly or through industry associations, chambers of commerce and other organizations. Nonprofit organizations can also use CI. For example, many research organizations, government departments, regulatory bodies and others, employ CI.
12. What resources are needed to practice CI?
Personnel trained in information management and analysis, with basic knowledge of the company issues; access to information sources; information technology for faster and more efficient information processing; contacts with the actors of the firm’s information environment.
13. What are the typical CI products?
Some are: Reports on the production capacity of competitors and on their plans to develop new products; new technology trends; folder of patents of competitors; identification of gaps in our own R & D and technology; assessment of technology requirements for new products or processes, identification of new businesses in our sector; identification of business and technology opportunities; company profiles, industrial sector profiles; evaluation of trends; identification of hidden potential of competitors; negotiations assessment. There is no limit to what CI can achieve for the organization. The only limit lies in the ethical and legal procedures to get to the final product.
14. If a company applies CI, others can too. How to protect ourselves in this case?
Through the mechanisms of counter-intelligence, i.e., protection of the information and knowledge generated within the company: industrial property rights strategy, information safekeeping, control of archives and other knowledge assets.
15. How useful can be CI to Humboldt International University?
Extremely useful. Since distance education based on digital platforms is a relatively new and expanding field, in a country where education is important, it is vital to know the technological trends, the actions of actual and potential competitors, the regulatory environment and the vision of potential customers. Similarly, for their ability to work in Spanish, everything that happens in this field in such a vast area as the Hispanic world, it is of strategic interest to HIU and CI is the tool of choice for tactical and strategic guidance.
