Competitive Intelligence Basics Workshop October 30, 2009

Achieving competitive advantage through systematic competitor and market analysis

ImageIn times of increasing competition and complex, fast-moving competitive environments, it is important to be one step ahead of the competition. Businesses have to anticipate the activities of their competitors when developing their strategic positioning.Competitive analyses are essential to the successful development of corporate strategy, conducting anticipatory strategy planning and gaining a measurable competitive advantage. Competitive Intelligence, which brings in a systematic analysis process, adds the decisive edge to strategy.

This workshop conveys the fundamentals needed to efficiently conduct research, master information overload, use analytical tools intelligently, implement CI as a process in your business and make strategic decisions with greater certainty.

ImageThrough the more than 15-year CI-experience of the course instructor Rainer Michaeli, "Competitive Intelligence" will be demonstrated hands-on and interactively through exercises and examples from different industries.

Active cooperation of the attendees is expected during the workshops. After all, it is your questions that have to be answered.

Besides the workshop documents, the attendees receive numerous current articles and checklists on the subject of Competitive Intelligence.
Workshop foci
The value of Competitive Intelligence (CI) for your business

* What do Competitive Intelligence signify for strategic corporate planning?
* How does CI influence the competitive capac­ity of the company?
* Ethical and current legal conditions
* Differences between "Competitive Intelli­gence" und "market research"
* What do the CI cycle, planning, collection, analysis and reporting look like in detail?

Analysis of one's own company:
Where are we now and where do we intend to go?

* How is your business positioned in the mar­ket?
* What do you already know about your compe­tition? Ask for decisive information on companies, market sectors, products, meth­ods, technologies, patents, etc.
* How is the competition positioned and how does it differentiate itself?

Handling the information overload and testing the quality of data

* Make or buy: Buying data or in-house data collection? What can external information service providers accomplish (information broker, consultants, market research agancies)
* How to test the quality and credibility of data
* Gaining CI information: observa­tion, primary research (human intelli­gence) and secon­dary sources (Inter­net, online databases, print media)
* Building up and cultivating information net­works (internal and external)

Analytical methods to determine the competitive and market situation

* Tools and techniques that you will have to learn for your daily CI analysis: competitor profiling, competitor portfolios, financial analyses, timeline analysis, Porter's 5 Forces industry structure analysis, SWOT analysis, etc.
* Satisfy the critical information needs of the de­cision maker/receiver: editing of informa­tion and intelligence reporting

Successful implementation of a CI system in a business

* The objective and intelligence demand analy­sis
* Who are the users of intelligence? (when, what, by what date, how often and in what format)
* How do you implement CI in the organization? (roles, responsibilities, technical implementa­tion and budgets)
* Solution approaches with which you can de­velop a Competitive Intelligence Center in your business: from simple desktop solutions through to intranet portals
* Trends, news and solutions of various CI soft­ware providers
* Determining realistic CI success criteria
* How do you secure the know-how of your own business against corporate crime and espionage/counter intelligence?

Readings

* Competitive Intelligence (by Rainer Michaeli)
* The Manager's Guide to Competitive Intelligence (by John J. McGonagle and Carolyn M. Vella)
* Competitive Intelligence Ethics (by Dale Fehringer and Bonnier Hohhof)

Articles

* Small but Powerfull (by Amy Berger, 1997)
* The Language of Business Intelligence (by Prior Vernon, 2004)
* Key Intelligence Topics: A Process to Identify and Define Intelligence Needs (by Jan Herring, 1999)
* Intelligence Essential for Everyone (by Lisa Krizan, 1999)
* Avoiding Common CI Pitfalls (by Tanya Sewell, 2006)

More Information

* Online registration
* All Workshops, Dates, Fees
* PDF-Catalog
* Speaker: Michaeli

more Information