SCIP Premier Partner Traction Software gets more ink in this CNET article.
But many others are tapping into the power of blogs behind a veil of
secrecy. A major European pharmaceuticals company, for example, has
enhanced its competitive intelligence unit with Traction Software.
Previously, the company's competitive intelligence team would survey
published sources of information such as patent filings or new-drug
announcements, talk to salespeople and customers and then summarize the
material in a long document that would then be sent out via e-mail to
thousands of people in the company.
The problem was that valuable information would often be buried on page
27 of a 50-page report or wouldn't be shared with key distribution and
partners and customers because some of the information was sensitive.
Traction's software established a Web log for the pharmaceutical
company's competitive intelligence unit to share the information with
management, sales and marketing executives. When something of
particular interest to a specific executive is added to the blog, he
will be automatically alerted by using search and syndication
technologies. And for those executives that don't want to check the Web
site continually, executives can set the service to send them a daily
newsletter with information relevant only to them.
Furthermore, distributors and partners can gain access to specific
parts of the blog that are of interest to them but will still be
prohibited from accessing areas containing confidential information.
"It makes the information more actionable and valuable," Traction's
Lloyd says. "Another IT customer of ours at a big pharma got a
promotion two days after deploying this within the company."
He says that Traction's software is used by 125 companies, governmental
agencies and nonprofits, among them Bank of America, the U.S.
Department of Defense and the IJIS Institute, a so-called 501(c)(3)
nonprofit group for the information technology industry.
