COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

There are many challenges to face in this century. It’s an era of information. Those who have the best information are going to win the race for supremacy on the market. More and more managers are aware of the fact that they have to do something to remain on the market and to be successful. They have to adapt and to try to gain an advantage over the competitors. Nowadays, the only thing that makes the difference is the company’s competitiveness. The times when the one who had the capacity to produce more was the leader are long gone; now all the actors on every market are focused on quality and this leads to severe competition. What is left then? How can a company gain competitive advantage? The only thing that can make a difference is not the quality of the product but the quality of the information they posses about the market, the client, the product, the technological process, management etc. It’s about the information management. It’s about competitive intelligence.competitive intelligence, information, intelligence, strategy

Information display from board wargame for marketing strategy identification

Marketing warfare is an alternative solution for a company to defend itself or to win market parts. This approach presents consumer spirit as a battleground where companies make military maneuvers to confront each other. But a problem subsists, how make a link between market and battle or war? May be a solution exists: business wargames. But now, they are too complex or only role playing oriented without any solution to map battles. However, before being business wargames, wargames were developed to propose visual solutions to recreate a specific war situation. Now, wargames for civilians exist, with a particular kind: board wargames, which we found very interesting for information display. In this paper, we develop a methodology to apply a board wargame tool for a market situation. This methodology contributes to creative competitive intelligence (or creative watch) a new kind of competitive intelligence, in the sense it participates to information discovery that directly contributes to the creation and innovation process.intelligence économique, veille stratégique, veille concurrentielle, veille marché, veille créative, veille des innovations, veille des créations, visualisation d'information, innovation, jeu de guerre, wargame, war game, jeu sérieux // creative intelligence, strategic intelligence, competitive intelligence, economic intelligence, market intelligence, business intelligence, information visualization, wargaming, wargame, war game, marketing warfare, innovation, watch, serious game, serious gaming, creative competitive intelligence

COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE COMPARISON BASED ON THE TYPES OF INDUSTRY. CASE STUDY: LISTED COMPANIES IN TEHRAN STOCK EXCHANGE (TSE)

The purpose of this study is to compare competitive intelligence based on the types of industry. In order to do this, the listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during a five year period (2004-2008) have been selected. These companies’ products are grouped into five industrial categories; that are, food & drink, tile & ceramic, petrochemical, automobile & parts manufacturing, and cement. In this study, we compare the level of competitive intelligence and its four dimensions among different companies to analyze its relation with the type of industry by using GTILab methodology. The results show significant difference in the competitive intelligence of surveyed industries.competitive intelligence, strategy, competitor analysis, industry

Social intelligence and competitive intelligence

Coloca os conceitos de inteligência social e coletiva no contexto da Sociedade da informação e do Conhecimento. Traça o desenvolvimento da inteligência econômica nos países e a aplicação da inteligência competitiva nas organizações. Defende que a ação conjunta do processo de gestão da informação e gestão do conhecimento, ambas em apoio às estratégia e missão organizacional, apresentam para o processo de tomada de decisão uma propriedade emergente que é a inteligência institucional. _________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThe concepts of social and collective intelligence are placed within the context of the Information and Knowledge Society. The development of the economic intelligence is given as well as its application and development in organizations as competitive intelligence. The thesis defended is that the joint action of the information and knowledge management processes, both in support to strategies and organization’s mission , have na emerging property for the decision making process – that is the institutional intelligence

Technology competitive intelligence

The impending mass retirement of baby-boomer COBOL developers, has companies that wish to maintain their COBOL systems fearing a skill shortage. Due to the dominance of COBOL within the financial sector, COBOL will be continually developed over at least the coming decade. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part consists of a literature study of COBOL; both as a programming language and the skills required as a COBOL developer. Interviews were conducted with key Handelsbanken staff, regarding the current state of COBOL and the future of COBOL in Handelsbanken. The second part consists of a quantitative forecast of future COBOL workforce state in Handelsbanken. The forecast uses data that was gathered by sending out a questionnaire to all COBOL staff. The continued lack of COBOL developers entering the labor market may create a skill-shortage. It is crucial to gather the knowledge of the skilled developers before they retire, as changes in old COBOL systems may have gone undocumented, making it very hard for new developers to understand how the systems work without guidance. To mitigate the skill shortage and enable modernization, an extraction of the business knowledge from the systems should be done. Doing this before the current COBOL workforce retires will ease the understanding of the extracted data. The forecasts of Handelsbanken’s COBOL workforce are based on developer experience and hiring, averaged over the last five years. The forecasts take into consideration the age developers are hired, the age the developers exit, and their cumulative growing experience while in the skills pool. The state of COBOL in 2015 is used as a baseline of COBOL needs to forecast until 2060. I.e. the rate at which COBOL systems are developed stay the same. The forecasts show that if no developers are hired, most of their experienced developers will have left by 2030. To keep their current COBOL experience level, Handelsbanken needs to keep hiring over the coming 45 years. Handelsbanken has to hire on average 8.2 developers per year until 2030, and 6.5 developers per year until 2060. I.e. Handelsbanken has been able to keep a high average of 7.6 people per year for the last five years.Organisationer som underhåller COBOL system är oroliga inför den åldrande COBOL-arbetskraftens pensionering. COBOLs dominans inom den finansiella sektorn leder till att COBOL kod kommer att fortsätta utvecklas i minst tio år till. Den här uppsatsen är uppdelad i två delar. Första delen är en litteraturstudie om COBOL som programmeringsspråk, samt kunskapsbehovet som COBOL utvecklare. Intervjuer gjordes med nyckelpersoner inom Handelsbanken, kring det nuvarande tillståndet av COBOL och COBOLs framtid i Handelsbanken. Den andra delen består av en kvantitativ prognos kring Handelsbankens behov av COBOL utvecklare i framtiden. Prognosen bygger på data som samlats genom att skicka ut en enkät till alla COBOL utvecklare. Den fortsatta bristen på nya COBOL utvecklare på arbetsmarknaden kan skapa en kompetensbrist. Det är viktigt att samla kunskapen som de pensionerande utvecklarna bär på, eftersom ändringarna i systemen kan ha gått odokumenterade, vilket gör det väldigt svårt för nya utvecklare att förstå systemen utan vägledning. För att minska kompetensbehovet och möjliggöra modernisering av systemen, bör en extraktion av affärskunskap göras ur systemen. Att ta hjälp av utvecklarna av systemen kan avsevärt förenkla förståelsen av den extraherade informationen. Prognoserna av Handelsbankens COBOL arbetskraft baseras på data om utvecklarerfarenhet och anställning över de senaste fem åren. Prognoserna tar hänsyn till åldern när utvecklarna anställs, åldern när utvecklarna slutar, och tillväxten av deras sammanlagda erfarenhet under tiden de jobbar. Prognosen använder COBOL erfarenhetsbehovet i 2015 som en bas för prognosen. Prognosen beräknar behoven fram till år 2060. Prognoserna visar att om inga nya tillskott av utvecklare görs, så kommer de flesta av Handelsbankens erfarna utvecklare ha slutat vid år 2030. För att behålla deras nuvarande erfarenhetsnivå, så kommer Handelsbanken behöva kontinuerligt anställa utvecklare över kommande 45 åren. Handelsbanken kommer behöva anställa i genomsnitt 8,2 utvecklare per år fram till 2030, och därefter 6,5 utvecklare per år fram till 2060. Handelsbanken har lyckats ha en hög genomsnittlig anställningstakt de senaste fem åren, 7,6 personer per år

Relevance of the competitive intelligence process on the Spanish pharmaceutical companies

It is common to find Competitive Intelligence activities within the high-tech enterprises in particular in the pharmaceutical industry. These companies not only use the process of Competitive Intelligence to act against competitors, traditional aim of the Competitive Intelligence. It is increasingly used to enhance cooperation. The Cycle of Competitive Intelligence (CI) is used both as to extract offensive and defensive intelligence as cooperative intelligence. The paper presents the results of a sample study of 186 Spanish pharmaceutical companies that were asked about the purpose of cooperation in their Competitive Intelligence activities. The results confirm that these are used in the development of business relationships, search for partners, joint research, etc. and that companies bet on these relationships for the future within the Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence for small business management in the global business environment

The importance of competitive intelligence information for small business management has grown in the 1990s because of the increased complexity of the environment and tougher competition due to globalization of markets. Small businesses can purchase the competitive intelligence from outside experts or have its own competitive intelligence system. The internal system can be informal or a formal competitive intelligence system. The formal intelligence system can be analyzed in terms of its aggressiveness, which is the scope, time frame and the focus of threats/opportunities of the system; capability, which is the personnel, C.I. technology, and communication resources in the system; and the budget of the competitive intelligence function. The sources of the competitive intelligence data can be internal or external, field data or published data. Each have its own benefits