Why is competitive intelligence such a big deal, and what is it anyway?

Why is competitive intelligence such a big deal, and what is it anyway?

Welcome to our weekly raw and unfiltered straight-talking look at all things associated with competitive intelligence and related insight. This article is called So why is intelligence such a big deal, and what is it anyway? It accompanies this week’s episode, which can be found here:

We have created this article to accompany the podcast. This week we discuss the role of competitive intelligence in the lifeblood of any business, business development.

What is competitive intelligence really?

In its simplest definition, it’s the provision of previously unavailable knowledge. And this allows decisions to be made that were previously unavailable to be made to solve solutions that improve or benefit the organisation’s value proposition to mitigate risk and/or win more business. 

So it’s not just a Google search, then?

A sure way to win is to engage in a process whereby every opportunity is undertaken to improve the business’s value proposition. 

Using open-source search engines with the expectation of achieving a comprehensive understanding will not enable the right access and interpretation of the level of insight necessary to establish a valid and comprehensive understanding. 

To improve our clients’ business development capabilities, we design a bespoke service mix that provides exactly what our clients require to engage in successful growth avenues. To meet the core business objectives.

In economic terms, our impact is measurable by the positive effect of the EBIT, and it is maintained by the consistency of actions that creates continual improvement, and hopefully, for our client’s clients.

Big data

Many people mistakenly assume that buying a big data solution or paying money for a data-based cleansing process or something like that means they have the whole intelligence issue sufficiently covered. In fact, all they have is information which may or may not be accurate. 

Because data has been cleansed does not in itself confirm or ensure that accurate intelligence is derived. All it is is data, and it’s as simple as that. And it’s also a fact that the data could be old and accessed by competitors. Clearly, supplying such data to a sales team is not a great strategy from which to expect success.

Verify everything

We take that myth away and introduce truth and factual evidence from which data can play its part. Not only do we source data, but we also verify that data. After all, when has it been better not to know something than to know something? And not engaging an intelligence-led approach leaves the entire edifice balancing on unknowns. Also, people don’t think they can qualify leads using intelligence. Leaving BD teams to rely on lazy habits or some arbitrary subset of marketing that proposes to do research.  

The fact is that five-year-old intelligence or miss directed research from the distant past is no longer valid and is certainly not reliable on any level. And no area of business can rely on assumptions that have not been verified. Intelligence is innately perishable and must be part of an ongoing organic process to deliver informed insights to the decision-making process as close to ‘real time’ as possible.

Misleading data

Suppose your current approach is based on buying data and building the entire business growth strategy on this alone. In that case, it is pretty confident that the data is also being acquired elsewhere and who knows, it’s also misleading competitors. Or it may be part of the arsenal of a bespoke intelligence-led strategy that utilises primary and secondary practices and is aligned to both strategic and operational demands. And it’s specifically designed to be quickly applied by different teams within the organisation. So this 360-degree solution has become the key differentiator to success in today’s business landscape.

Why is intelligence such a big deal, and what is it anyway?

This article asked why is intelligence such a big deal, and what is it anyway, and it is an accompaniment to our raw podcast. 

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Created on Apr 3rd 2023 17:49. Viewed 73 times.

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