CI / SI Analysts:: Not Multi-faceted enough?

Brand Killer Robots reveal::

There were two intelligence analysts, one was called a competitive intelligence analyst and the other a systems intelligence analyst. The competitive intelligence analyst had had a formal university level education, whilst the systems intelligence analyst had left school at 17, starting as a prototype wireman in electronics, before undertaking a career in network management and strategic software design.

Both were very different in their approach. The competitive intelligence analyst would follow formal methods and strictly comply with the ethical codes set by the SCIP. Whilst the systems intelligence analyst approached each task in a much less formal way and did not constrain himself to the same CI process. In fact he made CI up as he went along.

When CI Analyst (1) was on a "how to set-up a CI wargame" training course, CI Analyst (2) was attending a "how to hack a cisco router" training course. Neither Analyst could understand why the other was following the particular path they were taking.

Whilst both analysts took a very different approach, they complimented each other very well for a number of reasons. Firstly they both thought the management team of the day were stupid. Secondly, they both believed in ensuring that the brand they were supporting was as optimal relative to the competition as possible. And thirdly they both believed that for CI professionals to surive they must be delivering constant value and just as importantly, "be seen to be delivering constant value".

From a management perspective this situation worked very well. They had a much broader spectrum of skills, talents and approaches to draw upon for obtaining competitive information - upon which they could make better, more informed decisions.

Problem was that the CI process relied on two perspectives, rather than one. Both perspectives had to be reconciled and described in a manner that presented a confident, honest and clear picture to the management team.

When one analyst went on holiday the CI process was less informed and worst still, compromised by the fact the perspective had now temporarily altered.

One way to resolve this is to hire and train CI analysts to cover both commercial intelligence and technical systems perspectives.

Competitive Intelligence Wargames:: The best CI Analysts: Programmers or Network Engineers?

Brand Killer Robots reveal::

We set-up a test to find the most capable CI analysts out of a group of programmers and network engineers. Neither group had any exposure to the real world of commerce. They were all techies really. The test we devised was designed to test the acquisition, assimilation and analysis skills of each group. Each group was given the same challenge which was to conduct a competitive intelligence exercise on a existing company who were looking to develop a new internet product to create growth in an existing market. We wanted to assess how well each group approached this challenge, how innovative they might be and how closely their conclusions matched with the real life outcome. Both groups comprised 5 members. Our Programmers were all educated to degree level, whereas only two out 5 network engineers held degrees.

Each group had 2 days in which to reach a conclusion.

Both groups took very different approaches. Programmers decided to take a formal approach by brainstorming what they thought competitive intelligence was all about and drawing up a list of tasks which were assigned to each of the members of the group. Some of this work involved conducting background research on this topic on the web - with an big emphasis on understanding what was meant by "competitive intelligence", before even beginning to approach solving the problem. This research took approximately a day to reach a good understanding of what was meant by "competitive intelligence".

Group 2, the network engineers took an entirely different route. Two of the networkers were assigned the task of scanning for vulnerabilities within the company and its competitors systems. Whereas the other 3 engineers were assigned the task of scanning the net for references and information associated with the company's in question, building a database for holding the resulting data and then classifying the incoming information in a form that could be assessed at the end of day 1. Some limited scripts were written to assess information leakage through search engines, identify competitor association with unethical entities and reputation breaking content that would be of value to the executive management team.

The Programmers concluded that they had a firm grasp on what "Competitive Intelligence" really meant and decided that their mission for Day 2 was to understand the strategic objectives of the company, retrieve market research data that related to this product's development and conduct a comparative analysis of competitor products - with a view to making recommendations by the end of the day.

The networkers assessed the quality of the data that they had consolidated in the database on Day 1. All of the 5 competitors of the company were deemed to have a significantly negative internet footprint that could seriously affect their product marketing efforts. The company itself were also exposed and the team decided to spend the second day developing a report entitled "competitive intelligence", which could then be presented to the board.

Day 2 came and went and the Programmers and Network Engineers were squeezed into the boardroom to present their findings to the Marketing VP. The Programmers conclusions were that it was a good exercise and they felt that a new product, priced aggressively would be the order of the day.

The network engineers concluded that there was no point to developing a new product. All the Marketing VP needed to do was to implement the recommendations to address the vulnerabilities in his existing product, then concentrate his marketing message at the competitors obvious weak points - and watch the orders come rolling in for the current version of the internet product.

And so it was - that the network engineers won the day!