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Marketing & Competitive Intelligence FAQ
Competitor, Competitive & Business Intelligence
What is the difference between business intelligence, competitor intelligence and competitive intelligence?
Although this seems a straightforward question, different people use the terms in different ways. Our definition follows:
- Competitive Intelligence is the process whereby information on the competitive environment guides and informs the company's decisions. Competitive Intelligence looks at the overall external competitive environment (which includes suppliers, customers, and other company stakeholders, as well as the economic, sociocultural, political, legal and technological environment facing the company).
- Competitor intelligence is a subset of this looking purely at competitors, rather than the overall competitive environment (which include customers, suppliers, regulators, etc.).
- Business intelligence is the widest of the three terms, encompassing the internal business systems within the company.
For other people, competitor and competitive intelligence are effectively synonymous. They use terms such as marketing intelligence and business intelligence to cover the wider environmental aspects.
To add to the confusion, business intelligence now frequently defines the data-mining processes companies use to analyse their internal information. You will also frequently encounter other related terms sales intelligence, technological intelligence, financial intelligence and economic intelligence. Essentially these are further sub-divisions, limiting information to decision processes relating to sales, technology, financial or economic business functions.
They say that the Inuit (Eskimo) have hundreds of words for different types of snow, while Arabic has numerous words for different types of camel. I wonder if this subdivision of types of "intelligence" is a similar example of refining terms to a level where the differences are essentially trivial except to the experts and just confuse everybody else.
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Quick Tip: Questions
Quick Tip
A key competitive intelligence skill is the ability to distinguish what you do know from what you don't know. The effort is then to find out sources for the unknown information - as the great English writer, Dr Samuel Johnson said:
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Unfortunately even with the knowledge there can be problems. Lewis Branscomb - the US physicist and Harvard management professor once said:
People rarely distinguish among data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. But they are as different from each other and as interlocking as starch molecules, flour, bread, and the flavorful memory of a superb morning croissant.
The aim of competitive & marketing intelligence is to turn data into something that can lead to competitive advantage in the same way that your morning croissant or loaf of bread depends on flour and water interacting to make something that is more than just a mixture of the raw ingredients.
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Books - Strategic and Competitive Analysis
Recommended Book

Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business -
Craig S. Fleisher & Babette Bensoussan
Buy UK £ or US$
For more recommendations visit our book selection.
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Public training
Competitive Intelligence Training
Do you need to
know more about
Competitive Intelligence?
We offer in-house Competitive Intelligence Training, customised to your requirements.
Find out about our training services today!
Public Training Workshops - ProfitNet Training Course on Competitor/Competitive Intellgence
Tuesday 15 September / Wed 30 September
University of Brighton - Postgraduate Computer Suite, Watts Building.
Cost: £550 + VAT
A two-day workshop split into two halves (with practical work to be competed during the two-week gap) focusing on ways to use competitive intelligence to best effect within organisational strategy.
Learn how to discover valuable information about your competitors and use this to gain competitve advantage over them in today's changeable markets.
This is one of a series of workshops aimed at helping businesses combat the economic downturn and prepare them for future success under the auspices of the Collaborative Training Centre attached to the University of Brighton.
More information & online booking / Brochure (PDF)
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Last page / site update: Thursday, June 11, 2009
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