Introduction to Competitive Intelligence Portals

Introduction to Competitive Intelligence Portals

The What, Why and How of Using IT Tools to Support Your Intelligence Work

By Jesper Martell & Gabriel Anderbjörk, Comintelli

About Us

Comintelli is a Swedish software company that provides systems and platforms for market and competitive intelligence.

Jesper Martell Founder & CEO, Comintelli

Gabriel Anderbjörk Founder & CFO, Comintelli

Agenda

• 1. What and Why? (10 min) – What is a CI portal

– Why do you need one?

• 2. How does a portal support the Intelligence process? (20 min) – Planning

– Connecting Sources

– Analysis

– Processing & Distribution

• 3. How do you select an Intelligence Portal that suits your requirements? (20 min) – Key Features

– Dealing with IT

– Suppliers

• Questions & Answers (10 min)

1. What and Why?

What is an Intelligence Portal?

Why do you need an Intelligence Portal?

CI is NOT about gathering information

What is Competitive Intelligence (CI)?

• It´s not a 007 operation

• It´s not reading tons of newspapers

• It´s not bribing employees of competitors

It’s:

The process of systematically

gathering, analyzing and managing information

about the market & business environment that is used

to improve an organizations competitive advantage.

What is an Intelligence Portal?

• Single, centralized IT platform for: – Collection

– Storage

– Processing

– Dissemination

• Both internal and external information

• Automates your CI process and frees up time for analysis.

• Support the intelligence work by being a one stop shop allows self service.

• Helps build up an intelligence culture

• Excellent marketing tool for CI

Why do you need a CI Portal?

Who are the users?

C-level executives

Intelligence Network

All Employees

Buy-in! Engagement! Awareness!

2. How does a portal support the Intelligence process?

Planning &

Direction

Collection of

Sources

Process & storage

Analysis

Dissemination

The Intelligence Cycle

1. Planning and Direction

What information is important for CI? • A CI Taxonomy consists of topics that

reflects the industry and highlights information that is important to the organization.

• Intelligence Topics are NOT based on what available information is about, but rather on what the users need.

• This means that there may e.g. be empty topics with no information in a CI taxonomy.

2. Collecting Sources

EXTERNAL SOURCES (OPEN & COMMERCIAL)

INTERNAL SOURCES PORTAL

3. Processing

• Indexing and tagging

• Approving and editing

• Assessing relevancy

• Recommending

• Translating

• Selecting content for different target groups

4. Analysis

• Visualize the content and its development over time and in context graphically.

• Support standard analytical methods; SWOT, Porter 5, Benchmarks, etc.

5. Dissemination

• Distribute relevant intelligence to the right persons at the right time.

• User friendly! Easy!

• Automated Alerts

• Reports and Newletters

3. How do you select a CI Portal that suits your requirements?

Selecting an Intelligence portal

• Many different options available

• What suits a company best depends on its CI process and organization

• Different vendors have different focus and strengths

• You need to have a good understanding of what your organization needs now and in future

Evolution of CI Portals

E-mail and Shared folders are main methods of sharing and storing information.

Ad hoc deliverables and little coordination or structure.

Common intranet is used as central storage and access.

Web (eg Google Alerts) are used to collect information.

Newsletters and reports generated.

Web based CI portal provides access to structured (taxonomy) information

Systematic monitoring of external sources

E-mail alerts are used to notify users.

Internal information and primary information also included in one single place.

Collaboration among users.

Multiple dashboards and acess groups.

Single Sign On

Mobile interfaces

Analysis tools are used to visualize information.

Expertise location and Gamification aspects

Well integrated with other systems

Active social sharing.

Informal

Basic

Intermediate

Advanced

World Class

Dealing with the IT department

• Policy Compliance – Security concerns

– Favored suppliers

– Design guidelines

• Integrations with other systems

• Overhead IT costs (servers)

• Time and prioritizations

• Either dont involve IT at all or involve IT very early

But can’t you just Google it...

• Google makes us smarter and stupider at the same time…

• Relevance? Google is paid ads and popularity driven

• Sources? Google does not index every page on internet. Does not cover all sources you need. Many sources are not available on internet.

• Processing? Many tools are better at aggregating in more meaningful ways from a CI perspective (eg Google searches are affected by history, location, browser version, cookies, etc)

• Security? You leave traces behind…

But we can build it ourselves...

• Build you own or buy ready made CI software? – Yes, building your own CI portal enables a

perfect match to your current work process

– BUT developing your own requires software skills and maintenance resources. You should focus on CI analysis

– Experience shows that it tales longer time & costs more in the long run

– Share best practices with others. You are seldom as unique as you may think…

But we have SharePoint...

• If SharePoint is already in the organization it can be worthwhile exploring the option of building something on top of it..

• But can be time consuming and epxensive

• IT are not CI experts (and viceversa).

• ”For every dollar spent on a SharePoint license you need to spend another 6-9 dollars to make it work”

- Microsoft website

Intelligence Portal vendors

• Content aggregation

– Abillity to connect content from internal and external sources

– Ability to add RSS feeds and web crawlers

• Content management

– Ability to produce reports

– Ability to input via web and mobile interface

• Classification

– Ability to manually and/or automatically filter/tag/archive content (taxonomy)

• Search

– Ability to free text search across all content types in one place

– Ability to rank by date/relevancy

• User experience and distribution

– Ability to access via web or mobile device

– Ability to create personalized e-mail alerts

Key features to look for:

• Visual Analytics

– Ability to visualize using charts, trends, tag clouds, heat maps, etc.

– Ability to benchmark profiles

• Collaboration

– Ability to comment/recommend articles

– Ability to set up different dashboards

– Ability to chat and e-mail forward

– Ability to locate other users and experts

• Administration

– Ability to set up users, topics, feeds by yourself

– Usage statistics

• Control & Security

– Ability to have secure user authentication

– Ability to encrypt stored information

– Ability to manage user access rights

– Ability to approve articles

• Scalability & Flexibility

– Ability to grow in terms of users, topics, sources

– bility to customize and integrate with third party software and content providers

Key features to look for:

7 Key Success Factors 1. Sufficient budget and

management sponsorship 2. Good understanding of user needs 3. Effective taxonomy 4. All relevant intelligence content

stored in one searchable place 5. Simple, clear user interface 6. Daily e-mail alerts (newsletter

style) 7. Internal branding and marketing

to activate users

Thank you for your attention!

Questions & Answers?

[email protected]

www.comintelli.com