Competitive Intelligence

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The terms competitive intelligence ( CI ; literally "competition research, analysis, observation, (early) clarification") and competition research refer to the systematic, continuous and legal collection and evaluation of information about competing companies , competitive products, market developments , and industries , new patents, new technologies and customer expectations. With CI, companies can adapt their strategy and competitive strategy to the changing competitive structures at an early stage and achieve competitive advantages in the dynamic competitive market thanks to better information .

The terms competitive intelligence and business intelligence are two different approaches that complement each other. While competitive intelligence mainly analyzes data about companies that can be found outside of a company, business intelligence deals almost exclusively with the evaluation of company-internal data. Competitive intelligence also uses a company's internal data, such as figures from the annual financial statements, which are made available to the general public. However, it mainly uses the unstructured data from the Internet or other public information sources. Business intelligence, on the other hand, is based almost exclusively on company figures and less on unstructured data. There are efforts to incorporate more data from outside the company and by embedding unstructured data, be it from the company or from outside the company, to give the figures a context, to offer causal explanations for certain key figures.

In French, the parallel term veille technologique also means the search for technical innovation. However, the term CI has established itself as an independent term, not least due to the definition established by the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), and has found its way into the curricula of universities. In 2008, SCIP first developed a Competitive Intelligence Body of Knowledge (BOK, German for "knowledge fund") and then published it. This BOK describes u. a. the 81 core skills a Competitive Intelligence Professional should master. In contrast to competitive intelligence , market research is concerned with gaining information about the sales market .

history

Competitive intelligence has its roots both in military history (see military intelligence service ) and in market research.

military

Carl von Clausewitz

The Chinese general Sunzi (around 500 BC) described in his work The Art of War the crucial importance of information about the strengths and weaknesses of one's own army and that of the enemy.

Information has not only been used since Carl von Clausewitz 's famous book Vom Kriege (1852) with chapters such as News in War (First Book: About the Nature of War , Sixth Chapter); rather, information acquisition has a long tradition in German military history. In Prussia , with its history pervaded by wars and changing alliances in the 17th and 18th centuries, organized information gathering was a political necessity alongside the standing army and tightly organized institutions. After 1945, however, there was little demand for military language and Prussian ideas in Germany.

industrialization

Nathan Mayer Rothschild

Especially in industrialized markets with few direct competitors, there has been aggressive market research since the age of industrialization . Without this market research, Germany would not have risen to become one of the world's leading industrial nations. With increasing industrialization, it became more and more important for the economy to get news as quickly as possible.

An early example of CI was provided by the English banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1815 immediately after the Battle of Waterloo . Before the introduction of telegraph lines at the beginning of the 19th century, pigeon mail was used to transmit messages quickly. After the Battle of Waterloo, thanks to his racing pigeons, Rothschild knew the winner of the battle before the British Prime Minister did. Rothschild sold his shares, believing he had information about a British defeat, investors also sold their shares. After the prices of the securities fell significantly, Rothschild secretly bought the securities again. When the news of the victory over Napoleon officially arrived, Rothschild made big profits from the price rise that followed.

20./21. century

In the 1970s, competitive intelligence developed in the Anglo-American region as part of market research. 1980, with the study Competitive-Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors published by Michael Porter , is considered to be the beginning of modern competitive intelligence. After the Cold War , many (ex) secret service agents in the USA switched to the private sector. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) was founded in the USA in 1986 and today has more than 1,800 members, mainly from North America. In May 2009, due to financial problems, SCIP was merged with a foundation of the market research company Frost & Sullivan and renamed Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals in July 2010 .

Competitive analysis was neglected as a competitive strategy in Germany until the early 1990s. The term competitive intelligence first appeared in German literature in 1997 (Kunze) clearly in a title. In 1995 a SCIP chapter was founded in Germany. In 2002 the independent German Competitive Intelligence Forum eV was founded as a registered association (eV) by SCIP members. In the summer of 2004 the Institute for Competitive Intelligence was founded, which offers an in-service training program.

In 1997, the École de guerre économique , the "School for Economic War", was founded in France .

In the past, Japan was considered to be the only state to date with an economic intelligence service ( JETRO ). It was founded in 1958 and reports to the Ministry of Commerce ( MITI ).

The five nations Great Britain, USA , Canada , Australia and New Zealand have been running the “ Five Eyes ” project for decades . According to a report by the European Parliament in 2001, the five countries have been running the Echelon project for decades for the worldwide monitoring of telephone and data traffic conducted via communications satellites ; it was and is also used for industrial espionage .

Great Britain started tempora around the beginning of 2012 ; the “ whistleblower ” (informant) Edward Snowden exposed the US NSA program PRISM in the spring of 2013 .

An estimated 5000 people work in the field of CI in Germany.

Ethical aspects

In contrast to industrial espionage , CI expressly deals only with legal, data protection- compliant, publicly accessible and ethically sound information about the weaknesses, intentions and capabilities of competitors. The transitions between CI and industrial espionage are fluid because of the often different national legislation. Trash trawling and waste archeology , for example the evaluation of rubbish from competitors for explosive information, have long been considered ethically justifiable as long as the rubbish is on publicly accessible premises. In order to clearly differentiate itself from industrial espionage, SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals) developed the so-called Code of Ethics .

Intelligence cycle

The process of competitive intelligence follows the so-called intelligence cycle . It is a concept of information gathering and evaluation that was first described by intelligence services in the 1960s .

The process consists of the following steps:

  1. Planning: Formulation and definition of the information requirement (definition of KITs - Key Intelligence Topics and derived KIQs - Key Intelligence Questions)
  2. Information collection: based on the KITs and KIQs; Primary sources are industry experts, (former) employees of competitors, customers, suppliers, dealers, trade fairs, congresses; Secondary sources are business reports , the Federal Gazette , chambers of commerce , lenders , market research and company information services, industry magazines, newspapers, the Internet, patents, and specialist databases
  3. Processing: Translation (for foreign-language sources), evaluation , structuring, interpretation and electronic storage of the information obtained
  4. Interpretation: Analysis of the knowledge gained, benchmarking , SWOT analysis (strengths and weaknesses analysis ), competitor profiling, industry structure analysis , simulation models, wargaming
  5. Dissemination of the results: handover to the decision maker, possibly further information requirements with renewed project planning
  6. Decision & feedback: based on the decision-making basis, the manager makes a business-critical decision; feedback should be given to improve the process.

Information gathering

Up to around 70 percent of the information gained about competitors through competitive intelligence comes from processing public sources. Publicly available information that will increase quantitatively in the future is efficiently and systematically selected and interpreted in the CI. However, specific questions from management require primary sources external and internal to the company. Many CI needs, however, can only be satisfactorily answered with the help of extensive analyzes of all sources. This is particularly the case with strategic planning and makes up around 10 percent of all questions with CI.

Unlike the information broker , the competitive intelligence consultant / broker works as a direct advisor to decision-makers.

literature

  • Johannes Deltl: Strategic competition observation . This way you are ahead of the competition. , Gabler, 2004, ISBN 3409125736 . 2nd edition Gabler, 2011, ISBN 3834927465
  • Heidi Heilmann, Hans-Georg Kemper, Henning Baars: Business & Competitive Intelligence. ISBN 3-89864-374-3 .
  • Christian Lux, Thorsten Peske: Competitive Intelligence and Industrial Espionage . Analysis, practice, strategy. Gabler, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-409-12020-3 .
  • Rainer Michaeli: Competitive Intelligence. Achieve strategic competitive advantages through systematic competition, market and technology analyzes. Springer, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-540-03081-6 .
  • Dietmar Pfaff: Competitive Intelligence in Practice. With information about your competitors in the fast lane. Campus, Frankfurt am Main, New York 2005, ISBN 3-593-37802-7 .
  • Michael E. Porter : Competitive Strategy. Methods for analyzing industries and competitors. Campus, 1999, ISBN 3-593-36177-9 .
  • Andreas Romppel: Competitive Intelligence. Competitive analysis as a navigation system in competition. Cornelsen, 2006, ISBN 3-589-23654-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Espionage scandal: British secret service stores worldwide internet traffic , Spiegel Online, June 21, 2013
  2. ↑ Gerhard SCHMID (PES, D); "Echelon" interception system Doc .: A5-0264 / 2001 Procedure: non-legislative opinion (Art. 47 GO); Debate and adoption: 5 September 2001; Retrieved March 13, 2012
  3. ↑ Report on the existence of a global interception system for private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (PDF; 1.3 MB) on europarl.europa.eu
  4. ^ Stefan Beutelsbacher: Market research for adults. In: welt.de . August 7, 2016, accessed October 7, 2018 .