Turning it all around
From Starting a Competitive Intelligence Function by the Competitive Intelligence Foundation you can read the entire chapter Harmonizing Competitive Intelligence, by Jens Thieme - Head of Global Market & Competitive Intelligence - here at MarkIntell.com.
In a major effort to address demanding changes in face of dramatic global developments such as crude oil and currency effects as well as strengthened Asian competition and whole market shifts the company started an Operational Agenda. This program was designed to improve marketing & sales operations among other business adjustments such as global SAP introduction, lean manufacturing and more.
A newly hired Chief Marketing & Sales Officer was mandated to setup a team of project leaders and senior managers in order to establish missing or adjust outdated marketing & sales infrastructure and functions in a corporate Marketing & Sales Office. His background from one of the top 20 global corporations opened a motivating look into world class marketing & sales operations that have worked so much better in a company that was a lot larger and more successful than ours. Something an executive always likes to listen to. That much for top level support.
Among his targeted changes and plans for excellence in Marketing and Sales a centralized Market & Competitive Intelligence function was proposed to and approved by the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors. As a primary goal the function was charged to implement improvements in intelligence to compliment all other developments and systems, funded by the Operational Agenda sponsors – the Executive Committee.
When this opportunity was presented to me I was thrilled for excitement and gladly accepted the challenge knowing that we needed to break down the long journey to excellence into digestible and manageable chunks. As we decided early on that market research and analysis capacities should remain within the 11 business units (although these resources were scarce and competed with many other crucial tasks) I started putting virtual teams together.
The core team was comprised of senior managers from the businesses representing all business unit’s marketing & sales requirements. Advanced skills in business analysis and strategic positioning within their units were selection criteria for the core team members. Another more ad hoc team was supposed to interface to crucial support functions such as the legal department to secure ethical standards for intelligence activities or the procurement group to establish and maintain negotiation power towards intelligence vendors. Marketing communicators started trade show and conference intelligence pilots with us or security officers could provide lectures at workshops to cover counter intelligence topics for instance.
As a member of the company’s Marketing & Sales Board that steered all M&S projects as a cross-business executive body I was able to reconfirm major project steps and continuously renew executive buy-in. Most importantly though: market & competitive intelligence remained on the highest level agenda at all times and thus became integral part of the company’s marketing & sales systems, processes and routines.
Equipped with the mandate to fix past issues and advance to excellence in market & competitive intelligence step by step a best practice analysis and status quo assessment were conducted within the first couple of months.
As availability of market data and information was considered the very backbone of any further intelligence development we decided to fix this situation first. Establishing a web based intelligence portal and document repository proved not only to be the first but most important project step to establish a central CI function.
It provided clear, applicable benefits to everyone involved from the start. And it forced us to look into many processes to create or revamp them in support of that global intelligence one-stop-solution.Obviously we found many marketers who couldn’t wait to get easy and regulated access to intelligence material and supporting information. The harder sale though had to be made to groups that were pressured to exclusively focus on profit generation and sales increase. All too often intelligence work is considered overhead under such circumstances.
What helped our cause tremendously was the broad introduction of business plan templates and marketing project planning tools that all included clear guidelines and techniques to develop intelligence via Five Forces, SWOT and Four Corners analysis and other intelligence measures. Now even the teams under extreme capacity constraints found much more efficient tools to accomplish standard marketing disciplines including market & competitive intelligence work. We still maintained a flexible approach to intelligence especially in areas where there were bigger fish to fry for the moment.
To opt out of excessive intelligence work but allow for major data points to be reviewed is much better than to skip entire intelligence activities altogether. With the introduction of our automated news clipping and intelligence dissemination system we could serve anyone who didn’t have the time to search for intelligence and thus was cut off from crucial news and insights. In difficult times even a reduced intelligence focus could provide most valid insights (such as major mergers and capacity shifts in a target market for example). Managers who needed to run their business unit under a stringent regime of sales focus and capacity constraints still had the option to limit efforts in intelligence activities without missing the major check points and health checks any business needs.
Here an opportunity becomes apparent to support such a business unit via the aforementioned harmonized, cross-collaboration effort as well. Managers under pressure to cut cost and personnel will most likely agree to be helped as opposed to lose their decision power just because they can’t afford to invest in intelligence activities.
We found some of the business unit managers to turn from opponents of extended intelligence efforts to strong believers in the potential impact once they understood how much they could be supported without spending any own of their scarce resources. Sometimes it also helps demanding to follow guidelines for business plans. Everything built-in will fall into place automatically. Intelligence is the very backbone of any business plan content along with collective expertise and experience. I can not stress enough the importance of intelligence to be built into existing routines and processes. Once all managers get used to it nobody could imagine losing it anymore. It would feel like a car without gauges and all windows painted.
Equally important to intelligence embedment into business plans and processes is the environment and support of the intelligence function itself.
In order to run a centralized, corporate supported system like we anticipated we needed clear and simple processes to gather intelligence, acquire material and services as well as rules to disseminate. It became clear to all parties involved that legal issues and risk could best be prevented by the involvement of our legal group. Feeding the system with material coming from outside providers triggered another harmonization step: standardized sourcing with the help of our procurement group. We did manage to increase negotiation power that way and our marketers freed up time that they did not need to spend wit contract negotiations anymore.
By now the core team contributed quite effectively to the general idea of cross-collaboration and harmonization. For once some of the downsizing and cost cutting of the past played in our favor as quite some of the businesses recognized the strength of this virtual team: after an initial time investment they would even save more time due to the deliverables projected by the implementation of the system and smooth processes.
As we involved more people, established more processes and enforced more rules for smooth operation across business units and support functions the importance of proper communication increased as well. So, we implemented an Intranet channel for intelligence users, producers and interested employees. It carried the unique logo for our intelligence effort that we showed wherever intelligence was the main topic such as letter heads, internal e-campaigns and presentations.
The call went out to provide subscription details to frequently used newsletters and online services. Where possible we started to consolidate these individual subscriptions into corporate accounts. Most of those we disseminate today via our intelligence portal today.
Meanwhile many other intelligence topics were looked at besides the ongoing harmonization surrounding the introduction of the global intelligence portal. Since capacity and readiness to add on new projects and tasks remained scarce we kept some of the status quo analysis low profile and many improvement areas will only be tackled in the years to come to pay tribute to the difficult internal resource situation.
While the awareness for intelligence matters improved dramatically we were able to offer quick fixes and bigger solutions for other areas that were identified as flawed or otherwise problematic. Trade show and conference intelligence for example is always a field where many companies do not go the extra mile. Still this is a field where already simple steps create visible results.
It is worth noticing that we didn’t just march through with a plan. Many approaches didn’t click, some milestones had to be moved, tactics needed to be changed on the fly. There were as many obstacles (Sidebar 2) as there were little successes. The key is to remain flexible and to stick to the long term targets.
Since concerns and resistance do not dissolve at equal speed and depth in all related target areas it might be wise to promote examples where common obstacles have proven resolved or obsolete for everyone to see. This should take care of remaining doubts or even open new opportunities with anyone who was observing on a sideline.
Sidebar 2 – Considering potential obstacles
- “Not-invented-here” syndrome
- Isolated support or supporters
- Irritating scope perception
- Capacity constraints
- Interference concerns
- Overlap with related areas and/or projects
- Sudden budget cuts (exit strategy)