As a business, you want to stay competitive. In order to do this, you need to constantly analyze the existing market for any relevant changes. As a business owner, the information you find and interpret is essential to your survival. In order for you to be successful, you need to adapt to any changes in the market or else you could lose money.
While there are many interpretations of the term "competitive intelligence," it is useful to view it as defined by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) in first place.
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)
Strategic planning is a management tool for organizing the present on the basis of the projections of the desired future. That is, a strategic plan is a road map to lead an organization from where it is now to where it would like to be in five or ten years.
What is Business Intelligence? If you search the internet for definitions of Business Intelligence you will receive a variety of answers. Is there a common understanding of the relevant elements?