Understanding Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence (CI) has numerous connotations, depending on the user of the information. Some refer to it as competitor intelligence or competitive affairs; others view it as business intelligence. According to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), CI is defined as:

… the process of monitoring the competitive environment. CI enables senior managers in companies of all sizes to make informed decisions about everything from marketing, R&D, and investing tactics to long-term business strategies.

The importance of the terms rest in how you use them rather than how you define competitive intelligence. Gathering and analyzing competitive intelligence unilaterally improves the strategic and financial advantage of a company, and in many cases, it can contribute towards the company's success in the future.

Words of Wisdom

"Knowledge workers do not produce a "thing". They produce ideas, information, concepts...The idea is to enable the specialist to make himself specially effective. This means that he must think through who is to use his output and what the user needs to know to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the specialist produces. " - Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, NY.