Competitive Intelligence Marketplace

CI Podcast

August Jackson of Evidenced Based Research (EBRI) has created a series of podcasts on CI which you can find at www.cipodcast.com.  Some of the podcasts include:

• Sep. 10, 2006 - A short hodgepodge episode highlighting a recent big business news story with a CI angle and lesson, a new book CI professionals should add to their fall reading list, tracking the Hoovers zeitgeist and an on-line forum for CI professionals.
• Aug. 14, 2006 - In this episode I interview Alex Graham, Executive Director of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. Alex discusses the results of two recent research surveys conducted by SCIP, the State of the Art: Competitive Intelligence (PDF of executive summary at http://www.scip.org/pdf/f_060608_stateofart_sum.pdf). He also discusses a survey of SCIP members on the question of certification and indications that the CI profession is on an upswing.
• Jul. 8, 2006 - In a somewhat opinionated episode, we look at some recent articles in the general media which discuss CI. Included is a look at two articles which talk about the growth of the CI practice within the legal profession.

If you are interested in all at what's going on at the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals you should listen to the Aug. 14 episode.  There are currently a total of 10 episodes and they're definitely worth a listen.

Cymfony Closes Another Round of Funding

Cymfony closed on a $7 million round of funding.  Boston Business Journal's article, including comments from Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein is here.

Blogs, Wikis, RSS and Competitive Intelligence

Arik Johnson, founder of AuroraWDC (SCIP Premier Partner), has a very good article that explains what blogs, wikis and RSS mean for competitive intelligence practioners. 

The article is appearing in Competitive Intelligence Magazine.

Traction Software - SCIP Premier Partner - Gets More Ink.

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.