Competitive Intelligence Marketplace

Social Network Analysis for CI

August Jackson has posted a PDF version of a presentation he did with Jim Richardson titled Social Network Analysis for CI.  If you have a few minutes it would be worth your while to check it out.  I thought these were some of the more interesting points:

• On slide 6 they compare traditional social network analysis (SNA) with SNA for CI.  They state that traditional SNA is tolerant of subjective interpersonal linkages, while for CI it is dependent on formalized relationships.
• On slide 7 they say that traditional SNA's value is derived from statistical analysis of linkages to understand the nature of interactions among groups, while in SNA for CI value is derived from determining the "so what" from linkages to drive business decisions.

Really you have to look at the presentation to truly get the full effect of their thoughts so go on and take a look.

August Jackson Back Blogging

August Jackson, he of Competitive Intelligence Podcast fame, has finished up his MBA and it looks like he's going to be using some of his newly found free time (is any time free?) to re-start his blog.  That's good news for anyone interested in competitive intelligence as August is one of the more interesting practitioners in the biz to talk to.  Here he writes about his efforts to incorporate RSS feeds into his blog.  Welcome back August!

SCIP's Home Page

Full disclosure here: for about five years I worked with SCIP and for a part of that time I was responsible for managing the SCIP website.  I use the term "manage" loosely because really it was just a band-aid job until SCIP was able to hire a real pro (hello Dan) who could take the site to a higher level.  There was a quick upgrade to the site a couple of years ago, and then throughout much of 2007 a new site re-design was undertaken that would integrate SCIP's management system for the "member's only" section and would also include more up-to-date web tools.

While the site is still a work in progress I really like what the new home page provides.  Basically it offers a nice one-stop-shop for the three major information categories that many people visit SCIP to find: upcoming events, a CI-related news feed, and the latest job postings in the SCIP Career Center.   Members can still log in to access every article published in Competitive Intelligence Magazine, but the entire CI community, member and non-member alike, can utilize SCIP's home page for basic industry info and that's a huge step forward for the site.  It's also much easier to navigate so even those not familiar with the site should find it much easier to use than in the past.

Anyone who's worked on website re-designs and launches knows that even the simplest appearing sites can be very difficult to manage.  Kudos to Dan and the volunteer committee and SCIP staff who helped get this new iteration off the ground.  I'm sure Dan would say that it's an evolving process and one that is never done (he's right) but at some point you have to stop and enjoy the progress you've made and I think this is a good point for them to do so.

Dan McHugh: I Am Not a Spy!

Dan McHugh, Microsoft's CI man in Singapore, recently posted his PowerPoint deck to explain what he does and doesn't do as a CI practitioner.  He also provides a nice look into some of the challenges he had using various services for hosting his presentation online.

How Companies Respond to Competitors' Moves

The McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting article (accessible with free subscription) that gives an overview of the results of a survey about how companies respond to competitors' actions, like innovation and pricing changes.  What many of you will not find surprising is that a large percentage find out about competitors' moves after the moves have been made, many rely on monitoring news feeds for competitor info and even when they do learn of their competitors' moves they are slow to react.  Here's two telling paragraphs from the story's intro:

When a competitor strikes—introducing an innovative new product, for example, or slashing prices—management theory suggests that companies should immediately dive into complex analyses of their possible moves and countermoves across the whole competitive landscape, assess these potential responses with sophisticated financial metrics such as net present value (NPV), and promptly mount a response.

The real world is much simpler, according to a McKinsey survey of executives from around the world and from a variety of sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, and high tech.¹ On the whole, as companies determine how to respond to a competitor’s moves, they generally assess three or fewer options and don’t look forward more than two years. About half don’t examine more than one round of countermoves by any competitor. A significant number rely on intuition to determine a response. And companies most frequently respond with whatever counteraction is most obvious in the moment—answering a price cut, for example, with a cut of their own, which often doesn’t hit the market until at least one or two sales cycles after the competitor’s move.

Discussion: New Tech Tools for CI

There's been a pretty interesting discussion at the CI Ning site on the use of new, web 2.0-ish applications for CI.  Some people using proprietary apps built in-house and others dabbling with things like twitter and TweetScan.  Check it out.

Powerpoints from Two Competitive Intelligence Presentations

There are two PowerPoint presentations about competitive intelligence that I recently found on Bloobble that you might find interesting. The first is one from NDS and the second is a presentation by Motorola's Joe Goldberg (Joe is currently President of SCIP).

Good News, Dan McHugh Posting Again

Dan McHugh is posting on his CI blog again and those interested in competitive intelligence should be thankful.  Posts like his EDS on War-gaming are the reasons why.   Apparently Dan hasn't been posting to his blog because his new gig at Microsoft has kept him a little busy.  Don't you hate it when the day job gets in the way of a good blog?

Not CI

Over at Confidential Resource Richard McEachin takes exception to an amateurish attempt at CI (quote is from a post on B2B Sales Pipeline):

Adam…asked a pricing question about an application component that could not be purchased alone…

…this question doesn’t pass the “Smell Test”…

Called him anyway…Cell Phone, with no company name provided…

…search Adam’s name in LinkedIn. Lo and behold - Adam works for a competitor. I called the competitors office, asked for Adam, and let him know that I would love to chat with him, since it’s always good for competitors to get to know each other. At the time of this posting, Adam has not called me back, and has likely joined the witness protection program.

After reading Richard's post I went to the source and found this:

So here’s my point - Competitive Intel is King, so how can you get it?:

1.  Act like a Prospect - Note to Adam’s boss - Get him acting lessons, because if he’s as bad of a sales support engineer as he is an actor, you should probably cut him loose.

• Make the Cover Story fit - In the era of Google, it’s probably a bad idea to name a company that doesn’t exist
• Pretend to be someone else - With resources like LinkedIn, Spoke and JigSaw, you probably shouldn’t use your real name.
• Ask relevant questions - Back to the Mercedes example - You should probably ask questions about the solution as a whole, and sound like an educated prospect (”After looking at the BMW, I feel this Mercedes is the better buy because it has Leather, Sunroof and Heated Seats for the same price…but I’m curious about the drivetrain?”).

2.  Research on the Internet - Again, in the era of Google, you should probably just search for your the information you seek.

3.  Post-Mortem Follow Up’s - Talk to your customers who you’ve won during a competitive procurement, or wrap up with prospects you’ve lost. Always preface with - “I don’t want you to cross any ethical lines, but…..” Satisfied customers can provide insight about the competitive landscape, and prospects who didn’t select your solution can tell you why they went with someone else.

In the end - Adam - I love your moxie.   You did the right thing, but you aren’t getting any Academy Awards from me.

Item one on the list pretty much puts him in conflict with the ethical standards set forward by SCIP.  To wit the third item on SCIP's Code of Ethics: "To accurately disclose all relevant information, including one's identity and organization, prior to all interviews."  I guess it doesn't matter if you view the SCIP Code of Ethics as an irrelevant nicety, or if you don't even acknowledge it, but if you're with a company that acknowledges it and purports to adhere to it then this would be no small matter. 

For the record I have no idea if the author of the post is a member of SCIP but the point is that if you're engaged in competitive intelligence you may want to check the recognized standard of the association of CI professionals to make sure you're in adherence with accepted ethical standards.

 

Roundtable Discussion on CI in the Legal Profession

Write-up of a facilitated discussion on competitive intelligence for law firms.  Participants include:

Mark Beese (MB) is the “marketing guy” for Holland & Hart, a 375-lawyer firm with offices throughout the Rocky Mountain West. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Legal Marketing Association and is a frequent speaker on law firm marketing and leadership topics. He blogs at LeadershipForLawyers.typepad.com.

 

David Bowerman (DB) is Director of Client Development at K&L Gates, a 1,400-
lawyer firm with 22 offices on three continents. He was also the catalyst behind ediscoveryLaw.com, a blog on legal issues and news relating to electronic discovery.

 

Cynthia Cheng Correia (CCC) is a noted competitive intelligence trainer, consultant and speaker. She is principal of Knowledge inForm, a CI training and consulting firm; the editor of Intelligence Insights; and the founder and designer of the Competitive Intelligence Certificates (CIC) Program for Click University.

 

Ann Lee Gibson, PhD (ALG) is the principal of Ann Lee Gibson Consulting and advises law firms on projects and issues surrounding new business development and competitive intelligence.

 

Mark T. Greene, PhD (MG) is Chief Marketing Officer at Nixon Peabody LLP. He spent more than 20 years as a consultant to corporations and professional services firms and is a frequent speaker and author on market research, competitive intelligence and branding.

 

Sabrina I. Pacifici (SP) is a law library director; the founder, editor and publisher of LLRX.com, the free, monthly legal-tech webzine; and author of beSpacific.com, a research blog focused on current law and technology issues.

 

Meredith Williams (MW) is a staff attorney and Director of Knowledge Management with the law firm Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz. She is a well-known speaker on knowledge management and other technology- related issues within the legal industry.