(Note to self – using “all”, “always” and “never” guarantees that you will sometimes be wrong.)

Beware of consultants (like me) that tell you that they know what to deliver and how to deliver it to your organization. Be especially cautious when the consultant knows a lot about competitive intelligence but only a little about your situation. Maybe, after you have talked with them awhile, it is more reasonable to accept the opinions of an outsider but only after they have demonstrated knowledge about your competitive challenges.

And what are your competitive challenges? Who cares most about these challenges?

Common challenges are growing the business, reacting to a competitors’ initiatives, clarifying a product or market strategy, deciding a business strategy question and cutting costs effectively. In many organizations, strategists of one type or another are the decision-makers. They are responsible for overcoming these important challenges and, thus, are the customers of the related competitive intelligence.

Competitive intelligence has a significant role in addressing all of these challenges.

Whether or not an organization recognizes or values a distinct competitive intelligence person or group, they still must consider competitive intelligence issues. Of course, this often happens in an opaque, ad hoc fashion in the decision-maker’s mind. This can be quite effective or disastrous depending on the expertise of the strategy decision-maker and the complexity of the challenge.

Which leads me to the fundamental response taught to me many years ago by my graduate school marketing professor.

His answer in response to any question we asked was, “it depends.” You might ask him how to create a new product line. His answer, “it depends” rather than “apply these five steps to succeed.” How do we select the right pricing strategy – it depends. We suspected that he gave this answer so that he could appear to be knowledgeable about any question. Indeed, this was a disorienting answer for most of us and we did not know how to respond to him effectively. Later, we understood that the key was to simply say, “it depends on what and to whom?”

The answer to that question unleashed a series of relevant dependencies that taught a superior lesson versus the simple recitation of some magical five-step formula. (Maybe he was smarter than we thought at the time.)

Effective competitive intelligence is similar. Understanding and responding credibly to dependencies is the great value to CI customers. Furthermore, describing, delivering and contextualizing the information in the right way for each customer determines how successfully the information is used. Because good competitive intelligence helps decision-makers make better decisions, the customization skills are essential for successful CI practitioners.

Consider first the case when little or no customization occurs. A CI practitioner may employ prescribed approaches for many problems. Having trouble with a competitor, take two SWOTs and call me in the morning. Trying to understand the industry, cite Michael Porter and all is well. Need to monitor the news, nothing is better than filtered RSS feeds. While there are many standard and helpful solutions (and each has its place in a comprehensive CI toolkit), rote problem solving approaches consistently are not nuanced enough for complex business decisions.

The problem comes because no dependencies are considered and insufficient customizations occur.

Imagine that you (or a consultant) attempts to complete a CI project without knowing the answer to one or more of the following questions (there are many more questions like these).

• What puzzles them about the competitive environment?
• How does the customer like to receive information?
• What has worked (or not worked) for them in the past?
• What analytical techniques do they know and trust?
• What is their decision-making style?
• Whom do they trust (and not trust)?
• What information do they already have?
• What decision are they trying to make?
• What constitutes personal success for them?

Which answers seem optional to you? Would having all of the answers be useful in organizing and executing the CI project? Assuredly, they would be useful because they would help customize everything you do to make success more likely.

There is no substitute for understanding the CI customer intimately.

Mounds of data, pretty slides, impeccable theory, automated tools and common solutions are profoundly less important than understanding and reacting to the critical dependencies of the customer. His or her biases, needs and challenges ought to drive how we provide competitive intelligence. All of that gives us the opportunity to customize competitive intelligence for the decision-maker and their challenges.

Customization makes it more likely that the CI is used to decide strategic questions.

(See my article “The First, Best Competitive Intelligence Project” for more information about how to understand what to do.)

Is “always” too strong a word for this subject?