What is Competitive Intelligence (CI)?
It is the use of publicly available information about your competition that can help you gain a business advantage. Unlike market surveys, press articles or your own field sales reports that typically recount past activities, CI includes predicting a competitor’s next move and becoming aware of change as it happens, before it is too late to act. Learning which employee of yours a competitor may be trying to hire (or manipulating to gain your trade secrets), what initiatives or technologies a competitor may be introducing within the next few months that will dramatically change your customer perceptions, what kind of pricing deals your competitor is using to rob you of business, or rumors a competitor may be feeding your suppliers, customers and potential partners, are among typical situations CI attempts to uncover. CEO’s Understand Why Competitive Intelligence is Important. At a 1999 international conference in Montreal on Competitive Intelligence, John Pepper, current chairman (and p
