Intelcollab Needs Your Insight! What Business Questions Do You Believe Are Most Relevant for CI?

[August Jackson]

My fellow CI Ning community members, the IntelCollab is seeking your insight!  What business questions, problems and decisions do you believe competitive intelligence is best able to address?

The IntelCollab is in the very early stages of creating a wiki at https://intelcollab.get-traction.com.  To make the site relevant to a wide audience we have chosen initially to organize the site according to business issues (questions, problems, decisions).  To that end we've put together an initial set of issues (see below).  Please help us make sure this list as comprehensive as possible.

What other business issues or questions have you been asked in your competitive intelligence career?  What CI methods and techniques did you apply to inform the decision-making behind this business issue?  Please comment on this discussion.  You may also want to join us on our weekly web conference next Friday (August 20 at 10h30 EDT, details forthcoming).

• Increasing Sales in Competitive Markets
• Predicting competitor moves
• Keeping executives informed
• Predicting Industry Change
• Resource Allocation
• Strategy
• Deciding which new products to launch
• Deciding how to allocate annual and long term investments
• Benchmarking corporate and operational performance
• Understanding likely competitor pricing and positioning in proposal bid
• Streamlining an existing product portfolio
• Becoming strategic partner to customers
• Improving sales team effectiveness in complex solution sales
• Pipeline Technology Tracking and Analysis
• Competitor strategy analysis
• Industry strategy analysis
• Organization analysis and productivity analysis
• Process analysis
• Competitive analysis of business opportunities
• Plan capital investments
• Capacity & sizing decisions
• Anticipate needed skills and capabilities

[August Jackson]

CI Ning Community,

You can go to this link (provided by Arik Johnson) to register for the IntelCollab web conference this coming Friday (August 20) at 10h30 EDT (14h30 GMT).

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/275897138

[Arik Johnson]

I shortened that link in the Share on the Event to http://ow.ly/2qq5v for tweeting/etc. also.

[Chris Hote]

August, I would suggest a topic: Preventing the double-dip. Which best advises CI pros may provide to CxOs?

[August Jackson]

Thanks, Chris. Many of the questions CI practitioners face have to do with seeking opportunities for growth.

"Double dip" is very au current. Would there be a way to rephrase this for the ages? Maybe "How can we identify opportunities for growth in down markets?"

[Chris Hote]

Your suggestion offers indeed the big picture view. I was more on the pragmatic side: How CI will survive the double-dip should it comes? I feel there is some urgency to deal with that topic.

[August Jackson]

This could be a topic for one of our Friday webinars when they return to topics of interest and the wiki project has its own momentum. Probably a good discussion you could start here on Ning.

What's YOUR take?

[Chris Hote]

Indeed I was hesitating between a CI Ning discussion and a topic for IntelCollab.
I think the topic is more appropriate for a Ning discussion.

[Arik Johnson]

Please start that discussion Chris - I'd be thrilled to participate! Seems like every business cycle there are predictable effects on CI functions and many of us have that long-range perspective try and anticipate what's coming next for CI.

[Chris Hote]

ok will do. please feel free to rephrase my french-english post

[Andrew Beurschgens]

It's a shame that I missed the brainstorm webinar this afternoon (UK time) but prior engagements. I would have offered placing the issues in a 3 by 2, the 3 headings fiting the core KIT areas as held by Jan Herring - decisions, early warning and competitors - and then down the left hand side offered - strategic and tactical into which issues could be easily placed/kick started the discussion. I know personally I have been leveraged (sounds so passive - how about made a strong case to increase the credibility of.....) in case building for auctions and used scenario analysis to evaluate the tactical activities to take today given the likely evolution of a revenue stream and optimising the actions against any end state.....welcome catching up on how it went...

[Arik Johnson]

Andrew, you're now setup with a login on the Traction server and should have received a welcome message as well, so please feel free to make additions or changes there as you suggest above. To listen in on our last call, I had some trouble with my FTP login, so have placed the recording of the call (60+ MB WMV file) at the DropBox link below instead if you'd like to review:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5562997/2010-08-20%2009.35%20Intel%20Collab...

[Andrew Beurschgens]

Thanks Arik, very much appreciated indeed. I'll take a listen