Here is a link to the SCIP website which has many interesting articles on CI
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Making the difference in CI.

Morten Rynning, SCIP Norge and CEO CyberWatcher, MortenR@cyberwatcher.com

Does CI really make any difference? Is there any research stating that corporations with CI-department have more success than those not having such? How many CI-departments will not survive ongoing layoffs and cut backs?

I guess this is like showing lack of understanding of the profession – and ignoring the fact that understanding the market is becoming more crucial every day.

And surely, each corporation’s ability to understand, predict, and adjust to changes in the market place is crucial. Throughout the dotcom phase investment bankers made investments and acquisitions not based upon understanding the dynamic of the market. The entire European telecommunications industry was ruined when they over-invested in UMTS-licences in a panic of missing out in the 3G-race. (The UMTS case itself is worth a couple of articles.)

But a lot of telco’s have CI departments, which obviously did not prevent these costly mistakes. But are these actually CI’s areas? Shouldn’t CI focus on monitoring the daily marketplace, reporting to business developers and top management? Isn’t CI mainly a support function, not responsible for the final conclusions and actions?

These are some of the crucial questions for CI in these days. How does CI actually make any difference?

1. Internal ownership of knowledge

As a support info-collection function in a corporation, CI is a “nice-to-have” department. Finding information depends on “internal buyers” seeking information not already available in the “buying department” or through external online services.

In these matters CI may end up competing with the library, marketing, public relations, human resources and knowledge management, both about resources and on the ownership of who maintains the corporate knowledge and intelligence.

A scenario may be that the winner is the information technology (IT) department. The ability to personalize and automate the information flow will define the premises for corporate knowledge. All of those departments mentioned above will be increasingly dependent on software to collect, store, and publish information. They above may manage and set premises for such IT systems, but technology will decentralize and automate the workload.

2.Daily intelligence

Let’s face it. All employees establish some form of information channels, balancing information overflow with filtering and securing ongoing updates. With informal channels (such as business meetings and rumours), CI specialists can be strangers. Of course the CI department can offer independent researchers or collectors. The question is whether such service is better provided as an outsourced service.

CI needs to use its expertise to establish optimized information channels for each single employee and structure their information flow accordingly. This should help both the employee and the CI specialists to set up early warning indicators (EWIs) on which each of them shall act, either together or separately. For instance, action can be based upon news (mergers, cutbacks, and result warnings) about the customer portfolio.

CI should be tapping into and monitoring such EWIs and be proactive on securing necessary actions.

3. Strategic ownership and focus

Does CI belong in the strategic processes, or is it best left with elements of research and analysis? Most often CI professionals do have a lot of competence (especially with research) to join the strategic discussion, but they sometimes lack the self confidence to act on it. Senior CI experts should be better at extending their contributions beyond their report to include conclusions and suggestions based upon combining facts and creativity. Of course, no one wants brainstorming reports. But CI needs to act similar to an external consulting agency: combine facts with looking at the problems from new angles and seeking conclusions beyond the obvious.

If not, CI will never become anything but a report producer, creating the desired documentation explaining whatever management conclusion is desired. That’s a “nice to have” department.


4.Making the difference

So how does CI make the difference? It needs to focus on these steps:
Transform from a knowledge service to a knowledge system and securing automated collection of all needed information. Avoid placing most of the effort on manual processes and maintenance of the knowledge infrastructure.
Establish personalized information channels to each single employee needing CI information. Help train them to use such information more strategically. Set up personalized Early Warning Indicators (EWI), monitor them mutually, and make sure the EWIs are analyzed in a way that they can be acted upon.
Use strategic process to establish a whole range of clear EWIs. Track those events that may raise the need for adjusting strategy. Analyze such indicators to quickly come to conclusions and create the win edge towards the competitors.
Move upwards in the strategic pecking order. Seek to become conclusive and critical beyond the obvious. Give guidance which may raise issues for strategic discussions by securing different angles to the process.

5. Create a strategic EWI system

Putting these issues together changes your CI from being task dominated to system dominated. CI can rationalize the collection of information and increase the corporation’s ability to filter and extract needed information. Through EWIs information can be forced into actions – based upon analysis. Moving upwards on the strategic levels, the output of CI will get more attention and value.

This way CI can be part of both daily activities and strategic decisions. CI helps turning news and information overflow into a business decision support system that increase the competitiveness of the entire corporation and ability to act quickly and reflected upon changes.

………Then CI will make the difference!
And that will sure make the difference for CI!




CyberWatcher EWI Flow: Turn corporate strategy into operational Early Warning system – maintained by CI – focusing on ability to quickly adjust to changes in the market place. CyberWatcher EWI-flow


Background

Morten Rynning is CEO in CyberWatcher and President of SCIP Norway. He has been working within competitive intelligence and PR for 15 years. In 1999 he established CyberWatcher – a CI software vendor that combines latest technology within monitoring technology and knowledge management (www.cyberwatcher.com). He is currently involved in research projects regarding combining CI and BI for Early Warning systems.

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