Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence is often misconstrued as the corporate or national spy getting a visiting businessman drunk and then milking him for secrets, usually using a sultry honey pot to trap him and coerce him to spill the beans.

            The reality is that this method is actually called Corporate Espionage and it is highly illegal. This is not to say that it doesn’t happen, but it is best to stay away from people offering these types of services to a traded company.

            What Competitive Intelligence (CI) provides, is focussed research and data gathering skills used in open source intelligence methods to develop an intelligence package on a competitor or specific market subset which enables a company to develop and revise strategy to keep it at the front of a particular marketplace.

            As opposed to Business Intelligence, which is software and systems based market tracking technology, CI is primarily human driven and precise, designed to discover competitor strategies and trends ethically and intelligently to bring the most relevant data to your staff to enhance your corporate goals.

            CI can also be used in reverse, targeting your own company to detect leaks and clues your own competitors are trying to discover about your strategy, enabling you to shut down the leaks and protect your corporate planning process, allowing you freedom of movement in the marketplace.

            CI is a highly cost effective and efficient method for obtaining market data which can be used to protect your strategy and develop plans to offset competitor developments.

            Many private investigators have the ability to perform your Competitive Intelligence and investigations tasks, often remotely where the need for direct travel is limited by using a variety of online and real world resources to meet your CI needs. PIs maintain great flexibility for short term and long period deployments of intelligence resources to fit your goals. Contact one to find out more in your local area or abroad. The majority of service providers should be able to put together a solid idea of how they can help and work with your staff to target specific points or sectors to maximize your their, and your, efforts.

Blog post is courtesy Elemental Investigations: Private Investigator Edmonton, an Edmonton, Canada based private investigator agency. They can be found online at www.elementalpi.ca