Move Over, BI...

 

The activity of collecting, analyzing and utilizing business-related information to help make informed decisions is Competitive Intelligence. CI is not corporate espionage, and it's more than just keeping tabs on your competitors. Done properly, CI enables companies to make critical business decisions based on facts, improves their competitive position, increases their understanding of risks and vulnerabilities, reduces loss of information and helps to achieve tangible financial results.

To be done properly, CI must be legal, ethical and rely on a process for measuring quality that strives for near perfection--Six Sigma.

"Businesses realize that competitive intelligence should be the fabric of how a company thinks strategically and tactically," said Tim Stone, CEO of Provizio, a Boise, Idaho-based competitive intelligence company. "However, due to the lack of consistent, high-quality information and the unethical and often illegal practices some companies use to obtain information, CI is often viewed as a necessary evil. We're tying to change that."

The primary obstacle to competitive intelligence being a legitimate business practice centers on ethics. Punishment is assigned to those who break the law, but what happens to those that tweak the rules just a bit? They may be looked at as unfair or inappropriate. But what if they take that …

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