The new year is here, and you probably think about 2022 planning. Many things happened in 2021. The business has started to grow again from all the problems. And you don’t need us to tell you about the obvious challenges we are have faced last year and the year before. So, how are you going to use Competitive Intelligence throughout your organisations? What key Competitive Intelligence goals do you have to go forward with? What do you want to find out? And what do you want to increase your certainty on? This article asks what Competitive Intelligence resources do you need to move into 2022?
A good understanding of the opportunities
So you may have a reasonable and ever-growing understanding of the competitive landscape you work in. You have isolated the many opportunities to go forward with. You have seen the benefits of Competitive Intelligence, and you either want to talk to us to see how we can help, set up or enhance your own Competitive Intelligence department. Of course, we can support you either way. These questions may help your thought processes:
Current operations and expectations
What does the business need to invest in creating your Competitive Intelligence strategy? As importantly, you need to define what the business needs to do to make the most of the opportunities you have and will isolate. Is your marketing, product, sales and customer services processes up to scratch to take advantage? Define the expectations to the board sooner rather than later, so they are not shocked.
What is Competitive Intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is the finding, sorting and critical analysis of information. To make sense of what’s happening and why. Predict what’s going to happen and give the options to help you control the outcome. Competitive intelligence offers certainty, competitive advantage, insight, growth & security.
Competitive Intelligence people
Do you need to increase the number of people in your Competitive Intelligence team because you have isolated more markets and competitors? Remember, many others will be looking to recruit Competitive Intelligence team members so that you may be recruiting in an ever drying-up pool.
What skills will your Competitive Intelligence team need to move forward into the future?
What training will they need?
Do you need to embed Competitive Intelligence into your organisations further so that everyone is providing insight to your team from top to bottom?
Buy-in from the top
If you are starting a new Competitive Intelligence function, all the above is applicable, but you are starting from scratch. And perhaps the first place to start is embedding the idea into your organisation. With a suitably influential figurehead, backed by the CEO.
What support will your Competitive Intelligence project need from your business?
Whom do you want to be involved?
What blockages will you need to resolve and get onside?
You need the senior management team on board and have access. Reporting directly to as close to the CEO as possible.
Technology
Do you need technology and tools to move things forward? If a new function, think very carefully before investing in a platform. They are not sausage machines. Lots of juicy meat may be found, but you have no bucket to sort it, and all you get is an ever-increasing mess on the floor. Technology helps with the monitoring, collection and collation of information. It can report information. But for it to become Intelligence, it must be looked at, collated, broken down and analysed by a human. Some platforms may claim to do this, but we will leave that up to you to find out they do or not.
We are not stuck in the dark ages, and we are not anti platform and technology. It is essential that you combine some of the great tech solutions out there with experienced people. Technology can help speed things up, and some battle card solutions are excellent. But ultimately, someone has to build them. The best question regarding technology within Competitive Intelligence is, why do you need it? Can you justify the expense?
Budget
How much budget do you need to get the right people and support agency on board?
What will it cost for external resources this year?
How much will the technology cost?
How much will access to databases cost?
Identifying these numbers will set the right expectations for budget decision-makers. We find that 99 times out of 100 if a marketing manager comes to us without a budget, they will go quiet after the proposal. They pass the proposal up the line, and a finance manager will ask why are we spending this on them when we have these apprentices or marketing assistants who can do it. It kind of misses the point, but this is common.
What Competitive Intelligence resources do you need to move into 2022?
This article asked what Competitive Intelligence resources do you need to move into 2022? We discussed the need to define your budget, get buy-in, assess your technology requirements, the people you will need to help you and the other resource will want.