Business environments can change fast; yet, beliefs and assumptions about those environments often lag far behind. Competitive Intelligence (CI) is one way to help validate and update long-held assumptions about markets and competitors in order to minimize risk and avoid big surprises. When developing a corporate strategy, CI should be a key component that feeds the need for information on which to base critical decisions. Ideally, the goal for an effective CI team is to provide business leaders with information about what their competitors will likely do, not merely reporting what their competitors have already done. To create relevant and actionable intelligence for an organization, a CI team needs to have the tools, processes and analytical capabilities to filter and synthesize vast amounts of information.
Unfortunately, some CI functions seem to fall short at delivering what is needed to support strategic planning. Over the years I have noticed the following common avoidable mistakes that CI teams often make:
Failure to Focus. You can quickly become overwhelmed trying to monitor and analyze mountains of information across multiple landscapes. We all know that it is standard practice for a CI team to monitor competitors, suppliers, customers, the economy, political and regulatory developments, technology trends, and interesting industry news. However, you want to reasonably target and sift the information to avoid falling into the trap of trying to watch everything, yet not really seeing what really matters. One solution is to work with the senior leaders of your organization to identify ‘Key Intelligence Topics” (KIT’s). While it would remain necessary to broadly watch for important bits of news, using KIT’s allows the CI team to focus more deeply on just several specific areas.
Weak or Missing Relationships with Senior Executives. It is critical for a CI team to establish and maintain a connection with the senior leaders and key decision makers in an organization so that the right intelligence can be delivered at the right time to support the strategy development process. Without a link to the people who need information you risk making incorrect assumptions about what information and level of detail is needed. If a CI team continually pushes irrelevant or non-actionable information out to the organization, there is a big risk that the team’s credibility will quickly erode. Periodically engaging the senior leaders of the organization to revisit and refresh the Key Intelligence Topics (see ‘Failure to Focus’ above) is a great way to remain visible, to hear more about the emerging priorities or challenges the company is facing and to ensure that the CI team is delivering what is needed most.
Focusing Only on Competitors. Of course, a core focus of competitive intelligence is to better understand what your competitors are doing and develop an ability to anticipate their next moves. However, making good strategic choices requires a much broader perspective. Key decision makers need to receive information about emerging issues and trends across multiple landscapes in order to minimize strategic risk and capture new business growth opportunities. Relentlessly watching and chasing your competitors can ultimately lead to a bunch of “me too” strategies that in the end don’t create a distinctive competitive advantage. Lastly, it is important to remember that your company’s most influential ‘competitor’ is the collective internal beliefs and assumptions about your markets and customers – it might be worthwhile to periodically verify if those assumptions might be hindering success.
Letting Ad Hoc Tactical Requests Overwhelm the CI Function. In the early stages of establishing a CI team, a good way to create visibility and begin building credibility is to solicit and deliver a variety of ad hoc tactical research projects across the organization. Unfortunately, these ad hoc requests can quickly overwhelm a small CI team and create a real distraction from proactively delivering more substantive strategic intelligence. It is not advisable to simply stop accepting all ad hoc requests – you would risk alienating key supporters within the organization. One option to consider is to proactively develop and push-out standard ‘packages’ of information that would cover some of what is typically part of the ad hoc requests. Another option is to loosen your grip on the keys to the information kingdom by setting-up more self-service options for your key contacts across the organization. Lastly, finding a tactful way to say ‘no’ or ‘not right now’ may be the best way to balance the workload of the CI team.
Avoiding the Truth. An effective CI team needs to have the courage to objectively deliver information – both good and bad. I’ve often suggested that a CI team should act as the company’s ‘devil’s advocate’ by testing the core assumptions that form the foundation for critical decisions. In addition, a CI team should not be afraid to or discouraged from assessing and comparing the firm’s capabilities in relation to key competitors. Company executives often develop an uncanny ability to rationalize almost everything and can amazingly self-congratulate themselves for just about any level of performance. To achieve real competitive advantage, they need to hear the truth about where the company is falling short. A CI team that can effectively deliver hard messages, without being too much of a hysterical alarmist, will serve their organization well as potential strategies are considered.
Avoiding these mistakes can help position a company’s CI team to effectively deliver relevant and actionable information that is needed to achieve business success and sustainable competitive advantages.
Posted by Tom Abreu 
Spotlight on Strategy 