Recipe for Success in a Competitive Intelligence Intranet
Establishing “Competitive Intelligence (CI) intranets” has become commonplace in international companies. As is intuitively clear, technology is simply an enabler in this process.
Interestingly enough, this is where the disciplines of Knowledge Management (KM) and Competitive Intelligence meet. The KM lessons on sharing knowledge apply to CI just as they do to sharing knowledge on any issue within an organization. Figure 1 illustrates KM as an “umbrella concept” to the different fields of knowledge within an organization.
The goals that companies wish to achieve by establishing a CI section within their intranets can be roughly divided into three categories: quality content, appropriate technology and a smoothly running CI process.
For the CI intranet to work, all elements are required: the CI intranet must deliver timely information that is relevant for decision-making. On the other hand, even good quality information will not find its way to the users if the CI intranet is inconvenient to use or if people simply are not aware of its existence.
Key Statements from the Document
- What is most interesting with regard to companies and their experiences with CI intranets is how the organizations have involved and motivated their people to share the information; how they proceeded from merely producing and distributing information to really sharing it for competitive advantage.
- Once an organization has set up a CI section in its intranet and trained its first users, it faces the acid test of turning an anonymous piece of technology into a tool that is supposed to justify the amount of resources invested in developing it.
- Once a solution has been implemented that satisfactorily matches all of the organization’s technical requirements, the rest is about internally marketing the technology tool.
- For an organization to foster collaboration it must shift from a culture where hoarding knowledge is power to one where sharing knowledge is power.
- By simultaneously combining the earlier-described actions in both CI process and technology development, an organization should be able to find the most efficient path towards an ideally functioning CI intranet.
The Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA) is a global network of business research and Competitive Intelligence (CI) consulting companies. The series of GIA White Papers is a means for the GIA and its clients and partner companies to share knowledge on key topics within the field of Competitive Intelligence. Please feel free to give us feedback on the White Papers by sending email to info@globalintelligence.com.
