You are a busy person and taking time to read this is a significant investment for you.

You know what it is like to create and run a business successfully in a market environment that is highly competitive and requires that everyone on your teams understands and contributes to the mission that you have defined. Executing the current business is difficult enough without the ever present and pressing complications of competition. Yet, competition is real and what others do makes a difference to your success or failure. Competitive intelligence can help you navigate through the complexities of the competitive environment better.

Alignment leading to tangible results in market share, revenue and profits is what you are after. Your goal is strategies that mobilize the organization and point the right way forward. There are five common imperatives that you have and several ways that competitive intelligence can help you.

• Protect the current business. Operational issues are important because today’s business funds tomorrow’s investments. Current products must be sold. Current customers must be serviced. How are you doing compared to your major competitors? Would benchmarking show more that you have more advantages or disadvantages?
  Compare selling and business development strategies with competitors, benchmark your operations and analyze customer decision-making criteria.
• Mobilize the organization. No important competitor is passive. Dedicated people at those companies are working to shape the future in their favor rather than yours. Their strategies are being implemented and you need to know what they are and what they mean to your strategies. One person cannot possibly do this alone. However, a well trained and focused team can do it and win. What would it mean to you to have your organization highly tuned to the competitive environment?
  Provide periodic competitive news and alerts, implement information sharing tools and train teams to identify important competitive intelligence issues.
• Track the competitors. The long term vision of where your company needs to go concerns your senior management. Decisions about resource allocations, R&D investments, M&A and so on are based on the products that must be developed for future competitiveness. Scenario planning, war games and vigorous strategy discussions arm your teams. When you see the landscape accurately, your confidence increases. What if you knew your competitors’ likely next moves with high confidence?
  Implement an on-going gap analysis process, execute tradeshow intelligence activities and institutionalize periodic competition focused briefings throughout the organization.



• Prepare for the Future. Analysis prepares you for the critical decisions about how to position your company in concrete terms for long-term success. You are well aware that you have to make bets. Whatever you need next year must already be started this year. There are decisions to make about investments in processes, relationships, product development and technologies. What will give you the greatest chance for success?
  Initiate forward-looking strategy analyses, expand competitor analysis to include culture/process/resource tracking and formalize trends/standards influencing.
• Deliver Results – now and in the future. Once you reach a conclusion then the work of convincing and aligning others begins in earnest. You have to argue for funding, decision latitude and resources. In the meantime, your key leaders must understand, adopt and share the strategies you have defined even while continuing to deliver results. How do you get to the proper blend of managing current operations and changing to meet future challenges?
  Marry the competitive intelligence information to the strategy planning cycle, provide escalation processes for off-cycle surprises and implement ROI measures to track strategy (and competitive intelligence) performance.

Competitive intelligence can help you be a better general manager. It complements much of what you already do. It helps you where you lack information today. More than that, it can help you make better decisions with more confidence than before.