Managing the Competition: Turning Competitive Intelligence into Strategy

Learn how top corporate competitive intelligence organizations use competitor data to drive strategy and market success. The secret to competitive intelligence (CI) success is rooted in the function's structure, effective communication and organizational empowerment. Specifically, it is a combination of formal CI operations and intelligent tools - with support from internal stakeholders - that serves as the key to developing a powerful CI team. To determine exactly how world-class companies proactively manage competitors, Best Practices, LLC researched how top-flight competitive intelligence groups: collect competitive information, synthesize findings into critical action steps, disseminate data to key stakeholders and integrate recommendations into strategy to effectively manage competition.

Comprising of interviews of 30 competitive intelligence executives at 19 companies, "Managing the Competition: Turning Competitive Intelligence into Strategy" takes an in-depth look at: structure, information gathering, communication and information use. This study will provide you with the tools to develop a leading-edge CI function and manage the competitive landscape to consistently succeed.

The success of any competitive management group is a function of its operational processes and capabilities. Certain CI groups are better positioned to manage the competitive environment because of their structure, reporting relationships, collection tools, analytical techniques and skills and capabilities embedded within their core competency. Best-in-class competitive intelligence companies manage the environment by establishing ideal CI structures, hire the best people and use even the most common tools innovatively to provide the most impact on brand strategy.

• The greatest strategic impact of competitive intelligence on managing the competition results from an empowered centralized structure, with decentralized function-specific groups - The competitive intelligence group's structure can be directly tied to the impact it will have on brand team strategies. The differences between a centralized CI group and a decentralized one vary in the effectiveness each has on managing the competitive environment. Benchmark research shows that centralized CI groups are better positioned to impact overall brand strategy, whereas decentralized groups are highly successful at affecting tactical initiatives. The ideal structure is a strong empowered centralized structure with function or brand-specific groups more closely aligned to those functional or brand teams.
• Company-wide support for competitive intelligence is vital to the success of the group - The appropriate level of support is vital to the success of CI groups since multiple stakeholders must buy into the groups' recommendations to make the process valuable. Senior support is important to establishing legitimacy and importance, while sales rep support and trust is linked to gathering critical field-level data. One CI group established a competitive network to circulate competitive intelligence through the organization, collect competitive information from internal sources, and raise credibility and awareness of their goals and role.
• Empower competitive intelligence groups to take a greater leadership role in developing and implementing competitive strategies - Embedding a culture of competitive intelligence throughout the company encourages company-wide support of CI initiatives. Benchmark companies embed CI capabilities throughout the organization by proactively pushing information out to users, establishing regular communication with groups, conducting informative seminars and by establishing reciprocal relationships with key stakeholders. With multiple departments supporting CI activities, competitive intelligence teams can leverage their influence to develop and implement recommendations to brand strategy.