What do Boeing,
General Electric, Motorola, Ericsson, Microsoft, Cisco, Teleglobe, Amoco,
Shell, Merck, France Telecom, the Canadian Government... have in common?
They all use an Intranet to manage their business
intelligence.
As management
increasingly looks at shareholder-value creation to measure its company's
success, intelligence has become a crucial capability in most
organizations. To make the right decisions, you need an excellent
understanding of your competitors' strategies. These are the typical
questions Competitive Intelligence professionals struggle with:
How do I create aflow of information where users can access the
information they need?
How can I encourage them to
feed back into the system what they have learned in the field?
How do I combine all the
different existing databases without antagonizing anybody?
How do I gather this intelligence without tying
up crucial resources? Let us introduce you to how the Intranet can help you manage
your Business Intelligence information.
This article focuses on the
following:
What is Intranet ?
Why use the Intranet for Business/Competitive Intelligence
?
How to best structure Intelligence on an Intranet?
What form can information on an Intranet take?
What type of Competitive/Business Intelligence
information should be included on an Intranet?
What
is an Intranet?
An Intranet is any site based on Internet
technology that is placed on private servers within an organization--a
site designed not to allow outsiders in. Because these sites are typically run on internal
networks rather than the Internet, bandwidth isn't as much of a problem,
so sound and video can be added without hurting performance.
Often, the
sites offer hooks into corporate databases with forms and queries serving
as a front-end for relational databases. The individual users access all
this data through the standard Web browsers they use to
access Web pages on the Internet.
The potential is endless. There
are a large number of corporate information resources and transactions
that are potential candidates for an Intranet:
Policy and procedure manuals
and quality manuals
ISO 9000 work
instructions
Employee resources
Benefits programs
Orientation materials
Software user guides and
hardware manuals
Quick reference guides
and
Online help, etc...
Why
use an Intranet for Business/Competitive Intelligence ?
You just got the mandate from
your boss
It's a New Year's
resolution
You have decided to deal with
the sixteen boxes full of brochures sitting in the corner of your
office... or under your desk
There has been a great deal
of publicity done by your competitor about the great way it uses
Intranet to be more competitive
How
is Intelligence best
structured on an Intranet?
The principle is to
establish a network of "Champions" who are legitimate owners of the
content. They will make sure each piece of content they are responsible
for is updated. Those champions are responsible for
the quality of the
information: they directly edit the content under their responsibility
and decide what should appear on the Intranet and what should be
excluded.
Users access the information
from their computer after logging in their username and password.
Once they have accessed the content they are looking for, they can either
view it, print it, download it into a spreadsheet if they need to analyze
the data further, or even update the content if this option is open. They
can find the documents they are looking for by using a search engine (as
on the Internet) or by "surfing" through given categories available to
them.
What form can information on an
Intranet take?
Type
of information
Format
Raw information
A
list of information observed in the market by product category
Synthesized format
A
more elaborated form where the raw information has been analyzed and is displayed
in a synthesized fashion
Searchable
database
Users can request a
competitor's information depending on the components of the competitor's
products; the database searches the components, adds them up, and displays the
anticipated action of the competitor
Links
to sources of information
Users
can view a list of providers of this type of information and access their Internet
site or e-mail address directly to request information. You might also negotiate
specific rates with those providers:having the final invoice for unlimited
users access forwarded to you
What type of Competitive/Business Intelligence
information should be included on an Intranet?
In the next column, we'll take you through Best
Practice examples of companies that are using the Intranet to manage and
share competitive intelligence information. The following is a list of categories that are
usually found on an Intranet:
Organization: organizational structure and
profile of key executives
Financial: latest annual reports, quarterly
reports, analysts reports, press releases of earnings, comparison with
other companies in the industry, projected results
Products: description of products and
comparisons with your company's own products, pictures, technical content,
new products, patents, description of capabilities
Pricing: competitor pricing expectations,
prices by regions or customer segments, rumors
Alliances: alliance partners and date of
alliance, implications for your company
Customers: your competitors' customer
lists
Technology: product description, comparisons
Customers: profile, key contacts, action list,
strategy to approach, customer service fields, financial status
Regulation: key regulatory texts and
interpretation, future bills pending
Market: size of actual and future market, main
market trends affecting the industry, key economic reports,
prospective
Customer surveys: key results of customer surveys,
analysis and action plan for the company
Marketing toolkit: latest company presentations,
travel schedule, visitors schedule, database of images and pictures,
argumentation
Events
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