Competitive intelligence get smart with the internet
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The document discusses the importance of gathering competitive intelligence (CI) primarily through public sources on the internet, rather than corporate espionage. It emphasizes the effectiveness of monitoring competitors' social media, job postings, and engaging with ex-employees for valuable insights. The document advises corroborating findings with direct human sources to build a comprehensive understanding of competitors' strategies and behaviors.
Competitive intelligence get smart with the internet
- 1. COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE GET SMART WITH THE INTERNET For additional information about Competitive Intelligence please visit www.Intelligence2act.com
- 2. www.Intelligence2act.com In modern society business is moving at an ever accelerating pace, where product cycles are measured in months and not years. With the rapid change and an increased competitive business landscape there are plenty of reasons to keep an eye on the competition. Gaining competitive intelligence (CI) is less about corporate espionage or spies, and more about getting the information form public sources; the internet just happens to be available for everyone. The net offers a wide variety of sources for your CI needs and can make corroborating a rumor as easy as tapping a finger. Keeping an eye on your competitors social media, having alerts for news stories, and spending some time in the forums will give you more information than you can handle. 2
- 3. www.Intelligence2act.com The best source of CI is still the ex-employee, and by using the net you can easily find their resume (with full contact details), or talk to them through a forum discussion. Reaching out to these individuals will give you a couple more pieces to the puzzle but there are numerous other sources online. Using the current and past job postings that a company puts online can give you an idea of their business strategy moving forward or their struggles to keep people in certain positions. Just a simple search can yield several reports by industry trade or research groups that specifically studied your competitors and therefore cut your competitive intelligence work in half. 3
- 4. www.Intelligence2act.com Most people that gather CI tend to value human sources, what they tell you directly, over what they find on the net or in reports. Tracking the stars at your competitors using LinkedIn or conference websites can be valuable, especially when they leave your competitor for a particular reason. Developing a relationship with these people can also help down the road where you may be in a position to hire them away from your competitors. Having your team review all of the available information on the people at the competition, at all levels, will help to give you the best idea of what the culture is like, so that you can infer certain things about future behavior. 4
- 5. www.Intelligence2act.com Using the internet to gather competitive intelligence is getting easier every day and if you are not already using it you should start right away. A simple search in Google can yield an immense amount of public information that you can use to form the framework of your CI but it is important to corroborate all of your information, preferably with direct human sources. With more public records moving online almost all of the CI can be gathered through the internet and the information is only going to increase. 5
- 6. For additional information about Competitive Intelligence please visit www.Intelligence2act.com