Can Competitive Intelligence Drive You to Success?
This article introduces you to drivers and can Competitive Intelligence drive you to success? Drivers tell us, it’s more than just good questions.
You have some great questions, and you are researching and talking to people. Now you will find yourself swamped with information on paper, Evernote, email and your cloud.
Then the realisation hits you that intelligence is so much more than researching Google really well — lots of data and no idea where to start.
It may sound simple, but the next step is to sort all the information into a limited number of piles. Then put them in order. The titles of these piles (or drivers as they a termed), the order they are to be classified and how we determine when we have big enough piles needs to be thought out and agreed.
These drivers allow you to develop future actions. For example, if you are assessing a competitor’s strengths. You need a question like how serious a threat is this competitor to our market? Your drivers could include financials, product pricing, people, customers, future strategy, marketing message etc.
A future action from products pile, for instance, could be “if our competitor introduces that product to that market we will… Or if our competitor increases their price by x, we will…
And then you are a little closer to intelligence to help you make a decision.
How to identify the correct drivers (characteristics)
- Create a driver list that cover what I need to answer the question
- Is every driver linked to the question asked or is there anything peripheral?
- Decide on no more than 10 and ideally around 6 drivers
- Agnostic and agreed by all
- Make a basket for each driver
Types of drivers
- Leadership
- Recruits
- Money
- Weapons
- Marketing
- Pricing
- Products
- Sales team
- M&A activity
- Types of customers
- And many more
Metrics
- What metrics will we use to understand how a problem and their solution to it is evolving over time.
- Metrics that will help understand if on the right track?
- At least one rough metric for each driver?
- Set a metric with a time frame and measurability.
This article introduced you to drivers and can Competitive Intelligence drive you to success?
