Competitive Intelligence For The Competitive Edge

Get a Leg up on Your Closest Industry Rival! With years of real-world business experience behind him, author Alan Dutka offers this compelling look at competitive intelligence--the process of collecting, analyzing, and acting upon information about your competitors and the competitive environment--and how it can improve your company's bottom line and give you a leading edge. Taking a true practitioner's approach, Competitive Intelligence for the Competitive Edge shows you how to integrate your business's operations--particularly marketing, advertising, and strategic planning--with the latest competitive intelligence techniques in order to achieve positive results in all areas. The author also: Reviews the latest tools and techniques for data gathering, storage, and analysis Provides helpful insight on information interpretation and dissemination of intelligence within a corporate structure Includes numerous real-life examples of using competitive intelligence techniques in actual business situations Offers important information on obtaining competitive intelligence information for the global marketplace Provides a list of resources for competitive intelligence information Competitive Intelligence for the Competitive Edge is a must-have for any business professional interested in launching a successful competitive intelligence program. About the Author Alan Dutka is President of National Survey Research Center, a marketing and opinion research company based in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a frequent lecturer for the American Marketing Association and for the Society for Competitive Intelligence. Mr. Dutka's other published titles include State of the Art Marketing Research, second edition, with Al Blankenship, and The AMA Handbook for Customer Satisfaction.

In this compelling new book by a former diplomat, readers will learn the secrets to developing an intelligence strategy by effective information gathering and analyzing, and then to delivering credible intelligence to senior management.

In the New Economy, intelligence will be essential for firms to gain competitive advantage—not just information or knowledge. Competitive intelligence, or the strategic gathering of knowledge about competitors, climate, trends, new products, has a long and successful history of generating competitive advantage. In this book, Rothberg and Erickson demonstrate how corporations can combine their competitive intelligence gathering with their internal knowledge management gathering into one dynamic system. Using real-world cases from the corporate world, the authors show how the strategic use of this combined system generates measurable competitive advantage. Topics covered include how be develop your strategy for sharing and gathering knowledge across the value chain, sustainable product development and innovation, manufacturing improvement, CRM and marketing, and developing a corporate-wide global knowledge strategy.

Tested-in-the-trenches competitive intelligence techniques used at today's top companies This book brings together the best thinking and practices in competitive intelligence (CI) currently being used at many of today's most successful companies. Featuring contributions from leading industry executives, it covers CI strategies across a wide range of business functions, including marketing and sales, market research and forecasting, product development, and teams. The only book on the subject offering a comprehensive view of CI, from the CEO down to the tactical CI team Numerous case studies vividly illustrating cutting-edge CI techniques in action

Make competitive intelligence part of your business practice—and be on the cutting edge Competitive intelligence is the art of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors, individuals, concepts, information, ideas, or data needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization. Competitive Intelligence For Dummies introduces you to this fascinating subject and gives you the tools you need to incorporate it into your business decision-making process. Conducted within an organization, competitive intelligence serves as a catalyst in planning and strategic growth. It is part of the value chain that converts gathered data to actionable information that results in strategic decisions. Competitive Intelligence For Dummies helps readers gather valuable information on the competition, the operational environment, and the target customer. It also explains how to carefully analyze and use this information in decision making processes to gain market share and stay on the cutting edge of an industry. Whether you are just starting a business, venturing into new areas with your existing company, or looking to gain ground on a key competitor, Competitive Intelligence For Dummies gives you insight on how to gather valuable information on not only your competitors, but on your market and key customer base. Gets you up to speed on how to locate, collect, and process competitive intelligence Shows you how to carefully analyze competitive intelligence and disseminate it throughout your organization Illustrates how competitive intelligence can help you gain market share If you're a business owner, analyst, manager, or researcher, Competitive Intelligence For Dummies gives you and your business an edge.

The Definitive How-To Guide for Business and Competitive Analysis Transform raw data into compelling, actionable business recommendations Answer the questions executives ask—“What?” “So What?” and “Now What?” Today’s 24 most valuable techniques: how to choose them, how to use them For everyone who performs analysis: managers, consultants, functional specialists, and strategists A completely new book by the authors of the popular Strategic and Competitive Analysis Business success begins with deep clarity about your competition and your business environment. But, even as data gathering has improved dramatically, few business professionals know the state-of-the-art techniques for analyzing their data. Now there’s a comprehensive, immensely practical guide to today’s best tools and techniques for answering tough questions and making actionable recommendations. Business and Competitive Analysis begins with end-to-end guidance on the analysis process, including defining problems, avoiding analytical pitfalls, choosing tools, and communicating results. Next, the authors offer detailed guides on 24 of today’s most valuable analysis models: techniques that have never been brought together in one book before.They offer in-depth, step-by-step guidance for using every technique—along with realistic assessments of strengths, weaknesses, feasibility, and business value.

In the modern world of business management, the aim of Competitive Intelligence (CI) is to gain competitive advantage through the investigation and analysis of market and competitive information. This book offers a fundamental and practical introduction to the conceptions, techniques and practice of CI. A number of case studies on international companies highlight the different aspects of CI in practice. The book looks at methods of resolution, ideas and techniques including how to carry out research effectively, manage information overload and use analysis tools intelligently. The CI implementation process is also a key theme within the book. Strategic competitive analysis is essential in order to develop a successful business strategy, plan ahead and eventually gain measurable competitive advantage. The Competitive Intelligence approach is geared towards this. This book is a practical introduction to the concepts, techniques and uses of CI.

The Holy Grail for most organisations is the successful attainment, and retention, of inimitable competitive advantage. This book addresses the question of how to leverage the unique intangible assets of an organisation: its explicit, implicit, acquired and derived knowledge. The refreshingly innovative concept of Intelligence-Based Competitive Advantage© is one which will eclipse the cost-driven and resource-reduction attitudes most prevalent in the first decade of this century. Tomorrow’s organisation will need to derive IBCA© through the expert execution of bespoke competitive intelligence practice, unique analytical processes, pioneering competitive strategy formulation, and timely execution of all three, if they are to succeed. This volume consists of insights from Competitive Intelligence practices at both country and organisational level, Competitive Analysis processes within the firm and within challenging sector and economic environments and Competitive Strategy formulation in profit, non-profit, real and virtual world contexts. It is essential reading for anybody wishing to gain a formal understanding of the practical and intellectual challenges which will face organisations in the future as they strive to achieve strategic foresight and Intelligence-Based Competitive Advantage. This book was originally published as two special issues of the Journal of Strategic Marketing.