Competitive intelligence: A systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing external information that can affect your company's plans, decisions, and operations.

Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence is a process designed to give you an edge over your direct competitors and to minimize your risks while doing business. 

Competitive Intelligence

Competitor Profiling

Competitor Profile, Competitor Profiling, Competitor Analysis

The strategic explanation of competitor profiling is incredibly simple. Superior understanding of rivals supplies a genuine method of obtaining competitive advantage

Competitor Profiling

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis 

SWOT Analysis is an instrument used to assess the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in the process of a project or in a business venture or in any other situation obliging a decision in strategic planning

SWOT Analysis

Saturday, 28 January 2006 14:27

What Is Competitive Intelligence?

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If you search for the term "What Is Competitive Intelligence?" you will find a lot of variying definitions. Instead of building our own definition, we decided to present the different aspects of competitive intelligence.  
 

  • Competitive intelligence is a structured approach to gathering, analyzing and communicating data to make informed business decisions. The data that is obtained can be collected from publicly available published or human sources (so-called primary and secondary sources). Any attempts to gather information illegally and unethically may lead to utilizing inaccurate data. (Competia)
  • A formalized, yet continuously evolving process by which the management team assesses the evolution of its industry and the capabilities and behavior of its current and potential competitors to assist in maintaining or developing a competitive advantage.(Prescott and Gibbons)
  • Competitive intelligence: A systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing external information that can affect your company's plans, decisions, and operations. (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals)
  • Competitive intelligence is the gathering and analysis of information from human and published sources about market trends and industry developments that allows for advanced identification of risks and opportunitiesin the competitive arena. (Ben Gilad, PhD )

All these aspects contribute to the understanding of competitive intelligence. It is your task to weighten the different appraisal factors and find your own approach of what competitive intelligence means to you. On our pages you will find tools, tips and tricks for the competitive world.

 

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Competitive intelligence, competitive analysis, and business intelligence are common terminology which express a company’s try to discover the markets
it serves as well as its own positioning within them. Competitive intelligence can be used to predict what the competition is going to do before they are doing it and react appropriately towards the knowledge. While competitive intelligence generally focuses on competition, precisely the same investigative methods provide valuable comprehension of the plans of suppliers or major customers. Unforeseen changes having an effect on essential suppliers or customers might have more impacton the business than the actions of individual competitors, therefore they can be worth observing thoroughly. If a company’s largest customer is acquired by a company served by its competitor, it'll either have got a larger customer or maybe a lost customer following the acquisition happens. The sooner a company is aware of the merger plans, the better its likelihood of getting the merged company’s business.


Affinity for competitive intelligence continues to grow over the last couple of years. As soon as companies discover their competitors are involved in management activities just like competitive intelligence, they frequently establish their very own programs, if only to keep parity. Within the telecommunications market, any rise in the level of competition will doubtless raise the importance of competitive intelligence programs. Paradoxically, due to the fact some businesses don't publicize the level of their competitive intelligence endeavours, other businesses may inaugurate activities assuming that such plans exist in competitors’ companies.

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