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| Of the hundreds of managers I've worked with in my career, Tom has to rank in the top 1%. He has everything you could want in a manager, a consultant, or a person. |
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Competitive Intelligence Survey Results |
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In February of 2010, I conducted
a survey of competitive
intelligence and strategy
professionals from twenty three organizations
about competitive intelligence. The goal of
the survey was to uncover the
competitive intelligence challenges for the new
year. The survey can be
downloaded
here. |
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The survey consisted of five
questions. The results are
presented below.
- What is your
relationship to competitive
intelligence?
- What types of
competitive intelligence are
useful to you or your
clients?
- How would you assess
your company's, work group's
or client’s competitive
intelligence effectiveness?
- What critical
competitive intelligence
challenges do your company,
work group or clients face
in 2010?
- What types of
competitive intelligence
help would benefit you most?
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Notes:
A person could respond in
multiple categories.
The large majority of
respondents performed CI
functions for their company
and/or provided CI consulting to
others.
Therefore, it appears that
subsequent answers should be
interpreted more from a provider
rather than a consumer
perspective. That is, few CI
customers are represented. |
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Notes:
The uses of competitive
intelligence appear to be broad.
All potential uses are well
represented though Marketing and
Product/Product Line are
significantly more common than
Finance, Relationships, M&A and
Operational.
More demographic information is
needed to explain the focuses. |
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Notes:
Perhaps the most telling result
are the assessments of
competitive intelligence
effectiveness. With "1"
representing poor performance
and "5" representing excellent
performance, respondents rated
themselves and/or their company
as above average in every
category.
The relative weaknesses are
evident in the framing
activities of executive
sponsorship, identifying needs
and orienting success measures.
Meanwhile, activities that might
be more dependent on a CI
analyst were rated significantly
higher.
These results are not confirmed
in my
survey of strategy leaders. |
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Notes:
The interesting finding is that
few are being challenged to
distribute competitive
intelligence functions
throughout the company.
Sometimes distribution (and
dilution) is common when there
are cutbacks in fulltime CI
positions.
On the other hand, the challenge
of business evaluations
dominates. This might support
the strategic growth and/or
recalibration activities that
are common among businesses
today. |
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Notes:
The primary needs of the
respondents seems to be help
accomplishing their current
assignments. Two thirds need
training and information to
support their work. There seems
to be far fewer requirements for
outside help (e.g., project
help, audits or mentoring).
These results are consistent
with the self-assessments
captured in responses to
question 3 above.
However, they are not consistent
with the strategy leader
responses where a larger
percentage were looking for
consultive relationship help. |
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