In a previous column we described why an Intranet is used by many organizations to share
intelligence. This article outlines the steps necessary for building an Intranet
to share your marketing and strategic information. Typically, five steps are needed
to structure the system:
Step 1: Define
your needs
Step 2: Choose your tool
Step
3: Prepare the pilot
Step 4: Rollout
Step
5: Follow up
Step
1 - Define your needs
Before even starting to choose
the tool you want to use, there are a few crucial steps you want to undertake.
Never underestimate the time spent on designing your Intranet pricing intelligence
tool. A lot of the failures in implementing such a system are due to lack of preparation.
This is the basic checklist you should use when defining your
needs:
Who are the users?
Organizations I have worked with generally make competitive
information available to a reduced audience. Departments or individuals in departments
such as finance, pricing, accounting, marketing, etc., usually have some access.
As a project manager, you will have to balance who should
have access to the information and to what level of detail. In principle, the
information is there to be shared and the larger the volume of users, the richer
the information. But you will have to weigh the risks of this information falling
into the hands of your competitors. My recommendation would be to leave open any
information that is coming from published sources, but protect any "semiformal"
and informal information.
Copyright agreements you have signed
with the providers of the information will also define who can view it: typically
you have a license for a certain number of users only. Passwords can help you
protect and limit access. Include the executive group as this will give credibility
to your system.
Also consider in broad terms what other processes
in the company need to use the information. For example, your R&D
department needs to know the basic pricing of competitors' existing and upcoming
products before developing a new design. Many companies go a long way into development
before they realize their product is priced out of the market. Your Marketing
department needs information to estimate what market share it can get and to build
sales projections. Your Strategic Planning department
needs to analyze if your company is lagging behind in terms of price and cost.
Your Human Resources department needs
to find where to recruit the best candidates.
What
content will be shared ?
Determine
what content you want to include in the Knowledge base— is it really only
the prices of your competitors' products? Do you want to include other information
about competitors; for example, their cost structures, their organization charts
(refer to introduction), comments from your customers about your pricing relative
to that of your competitors, extracts from market-research reports?
How
is the information going to be accessed and used?
Will
users access the information remotely? Will they need to print the information
or only view it? Do they need to download the information to be able to make calculations?
Will they want to insert it into a PowerPoint presentation? How much interactivity
do they need (i.e. will most users just access the information, or will they want
to contribute to it as well)?
Step
2 - Choose your tool
Ask the following questions.
What flexibility do you want?
Do
you want a proven tool that has already been used by numerous companies or are
you willing to invest in the latest tool which is better suited to your needs?
How easily do you want users to be able to adapt
to new technology?
What is the budget?
Do
you have full-time people who can update the tool or do you need to be able to
distribute the information maintenance?
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